The European countries have during the last decades seen a dramatic expansion of market solutions in education (Ball, 2003, 2007). This is also the case for Sweden, which has developed a more full-blown ‘school market’ than most other countries in the world (Lundahl et al, 2013, 2014). The current expanding ‘edu-business’ is an effect of the implementation of liberal school reforms during the early 1990s (Erixon Arreman & Holm, 2011a,b). The upper secondary sector (i.e. post 16 education) is the most affected and today all schools in Sweden, public as well as independent, compete with each other for students, teachers and reputation. In parallel to marketization for which choice and competition are the main mechanisms (Perry & Southwell 2013) schools have to deal with the vision and longstanding goal of inclusion and equity in a ‘school for all’ (SFS 2010: 800). Swedish education’s strive for social inclusion  (Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006) is increasingly challenged as Swedish education encounters growing social segregation between schools and widening gaps between students’ achievement in the last decade (National Agency for Education 2013; SOU, 2014:5).

School leaders are often described as key-actors for change and crucial for improving school performance, equity and capacities of teachers (Pont, Nusche & Moorman, 2008). However, the role of school leaders has been challenged in parallel to schools transition from public institutions into market-competitive organisations. Recent research describes how principals’ professional identities have become more manager-like and similar to a business leader (Holm & Lundström, 2011; Jarl & Rönnberg, 2010; National Agency for Education, 2010). Moos (2009) highlights recent changes of school leadership caused by increased demands for accountability, as part of the international New Public Management trend. School leaders need to balance these external demands with the internal demands from teachers for discretion. However, the development is multi-dimensional as NPM strengthens external demands at the same time as it contributes to a strengthened professional role for the principals (Jarl et al. 2012). This paper aims to explore how Swedish upper secondary school principals per­ceive and deal with the intersection between increased school marketization and aspects of social inclusion and equity in school. How does marketization affect the principals’ work for inclusion? What types of school leadership emerge?  

Theoretically, the paper is based on policy studies on privatization of education (e.g. Ball, 2003, 2007) arguing that intensified global competition rhetoric has led to an increased focus on the outcomes and demands for measurability. Using Silver’s (1994) definition of inclusion as the ability of individuals to exercise their right to participate, the paper claims that the marketization trend implies that the new monopoly paradigm of social inclusion (e.g. prioritized policies of redistribution of opportunities) have increasingly been challenged and almost replaced by a specialization paradigm (e.g. policies promoting high diversification). Moreover, in our analysis of the links between social inclusion, educational policy and school leadership, we are inspired by the analytical framework elaborated by Raffo and Gunter (2008). They use two aspects of inclusion, economic and cultural inclusion, which they link to two perspectives, the functionalist and social critical perspectives. 

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