The publication of the 2012 PISA report resulted in a second, and deepened, “PISA chock” (Rasmussen 2013) in Sweden. The report indicated that Swedish students’ knowledge in mathematics, reading and science has continued to deteriorate, and that this time, the decline is the worst of all OECD-countries (OECD 2012). Furthermore, the largest decline was among low-performing students, which implies a challenge to the self-perception of a school system in which equity and inclusion are long-standing, prioritized goals.

The international “policy epidemic” (Levin 1998: 137) has characterized Swedish national school policy since the end of the 1980s. As the realization of two international trends, marketization and decentralization, has been more far-reaching in Sweden (Lubienski 2009) than in most other countries, the public debate about their consequences has become heated. The introduction and consequences of school marketization reforms is illuminated in both international and Swedish research (e.g., Apple 2004, Ball 2007, Bunar 2010, Lundahl et al. 2013, Musset 2012, Ravitch 2010, Swedish National Agency for Education 2012, Vlachos 2011, Waslander et al. 2010).

However, there is a knowledge gap regarding the role of one of the most crucial education policy actors in Sweden, the municipalities. Municipalities (and private providers) are in charge of organizing and operating school services within the framework of national regulations and goals, e.g. the Education Act and the National Curricula. National school policy, such as inclusion and school choice, is mediated by municipalities and they shape the school contexts locally. Thus, this paper intends to analyse how municipalities respond to, and enact educational policy, by answering the question: How do municipalities encounter and respond to inclusion policy in a highly marketized school system, as expressed in their central policy documents?

Our research views inclusion not merely as special education, support to disabled students, youths in risk, or education for all (Donelly 2011), but as enabling young people to overcome barriers to a full engagement with the social, economic and political life in school.

The framework for the analysis is a governance perspective, including a socio-cultural approach, as the municipalities are perceived as enactors of education policy. Furthermore, policy responses are contextualised: “Policy creates context, but context also precedes policy” (Ball et al. 2012, 19). In line with Colebatch (2009, 65), policy is not understood as “a linear instrumental process” but actors (municipalities in this case) rather respond to national policy in an interpretation and translation process, and construct policy in interaction with actors from international to street level. Parts of the policy interpretation and translation process is expressed in various kinds of documents produced at the local level and they constitute a message system of priorities and desirable outcomes of schooling in each municipality. A critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1995) is used to illuminate what is (un)desirable and (im)possible, what is left out, and to denaturalize what is taken for granted in the documents.

Apple, Michael W. (2004). Creating difference: Neo-Liberalism, Neo-Conservatism and the Politics of Educational Reform. Educational Policy, 18(12): 12-44. Ball, Stephen (2007). Education Plc: understanding private sector participation in public sector. New York: Routledge. Ball, Stephen J., Maguire, Meg & Brown, Anette (2012) How schools do policy. Policy enactment in schools. London & New York: Routledge Bunar, Nihad (2010). Choosing for quality or inequality: current perspectives on the implementation of school choice policy in Sweden. Journal of Education Policy 25(1): 1–18 Colebatch, H. K. (2009) Governance as a conceptual development in the analysis of policy. Critical Policy Studies, 3 (1): 58-67 Dahler-Larsen, Peter (2012) The Evaluation Society. Stanford: Stanford Business Books Donelly, Verity (Ed.) (2011) Lärarutbildning för inkluderande undervisning i Europa. Utmaningar och möjligheter. Odense & Bryssel: European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education Freidson, Eliot (2001) Professionalism, the Third Logic. Cambridge: Polity Press. Levin, Benjamin (1998) An Epidemic of Education Policy: (what) can we learn from each other? Comparative Education Volume 34(2): 131 – 141 Lubienski, Christopher (2009). Do Quasi-Markets Foster Innovation in Education? A Comparative Perspective. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 25, OECD Publishing. Lundahl, Lisbeth; Erixon Arreman, Inger; Holm, Ann-Sofie & Lundström, Ulf (2013) Educational marketization the Swedish way. Education Inquiry 4 (3): 497-517 Musset, Pauline (2012) School Choice and Equity: Current Policies in OECD Countries and a Literature Review, OECD Education Working Papers, No. 66, OECD Publishing. OECD (2012) PISA 2012. Results in Focus. What 15-year-olds know and what they can do with what they know. OECD Olssen, Mark, Codd, John & O’Neill, Anne-Marie (2004) Education Policy: Globalization, Citizenship & Democracy. London, Thousand Oaks, New Dehli: SAGE Rasmussen, Jens (2013) Competence goal-driven education in school and teacher education. Keynote lecture. International Conference on Learning and Teaching 2013. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Ravitch, Diane (2010) The death and life of the great American School System. How testing and choice are undermining education. New York: Basic Books Swedish National Agency for Education (2012b) Mapping the school market. Synthesis of the Swedish National Agency for Education’s school market projects. www.skolverket.se (accessed 2014-01-20) Vlachos, Jonas (2011). Friskolor i förändring. In L. Hartman (Ed.) Konkurrensens konsekvenser. Vad händer med svensk välfärd?[The consequences of competition.], 66–111. Stockholm: SNS. Waslander, S., Pater, C., & van der Weide, M. (2010). Markets in education: An Analytical review of Empirical Research on Market Mechanisms in Education, OECD Education Working Papers, No 52, OECD Publishing