This contribution aims to analyze leadership in relation to child protection from violence according to the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Leaning on research stressing the need for transformative leaders (Shields, 2013) the paper strives to explore school leaders’ conceptions of particular cases of violence at a boarding school in Sweden as a question of socialization of leaders at the Swedish capitalistic society (cf. Anyon, 1997; Anyon, 2009).

The selected data comprises the following documents: Swedish Schools Inspection’s records of bullying acts; the website of the Swedish School Inspection; boarding school website, media articles about this violence case; letters sent by the school to the Swedish School Inspection and to other authorities as well as material of social networks of the Lundberg School. In all: 43 documents were analyzed. Five leaders’ conceptions of child violence are examined in relation to two particular cases that were investigated by the Swedish school inspection 2011 and 2013. This paper is based on a Critical Discourse Analysis. Following Norman Fairclough (2004, 2013), the interpretation of the empirical data includes three different dimensions: a) text analysis (description), b) processing analysis (interpretation), and c) social analysis (explanation). In our study these dimensions correspond to our research questions: a) How are violent acts described by leaders at different levels in the selected boarding school? (description step), b) Which intertexts are presented/referred to in these leaders’ descriptions of violent acts? (interpretation step), c) How to explain these leaders’ descriptions in a broader discussion about child protection from violence according to UNCRC? (explanation step)..

This result of the study indicates that systemic violence at the selected boarding school can be interpreted as a part of a socialization culture of privileged classes aiming to educate leaders that can maintain and reproduce power positions and privileges in the Swedish capitalistic society. The study provides with examples of a hidden curriculum that endorses leadership forms that are not compatible with the enactment of UNCRC in Sweden. Taken account that a considerable percentage of boarding school students will have power positions in different areas of the Swedish society in the future, this contribution shows the importance of developing transformative leadership at the boarding school context in order to guarantee the protection of child from violence according to UNCRC.