The last 20 years Sweden has had a governing system combining national regulations and decentralized local responsibility. This has emphasized the importance of  “local school machineries”. In these we find politicians in locally elected school boards, superintendents and middle managers in local bureaucratic organizations, and principals at schools. During the last ten years increased external demands (strengthened juridification and external control) have challenged the local work. All actors have experienced a governing system in transition. This means in turn that system related roles, professions and organizations need to adjust to the changes.

Added to the system changes is a change in the local school landscape. For more than 150 years the local municipalities (today 290) have had a key role locally. This includes a responsibility to finance and develop the work in public schools. The last 20 years the public ownership of schools has however been complemented by independent schools. These schools are public funded, nationally regulated and controlled, but have their own local school boards. At the same time as they are independent, they are intertwined with the public, not only due to national demands, but also because the financing of all schools is handled through the municipality boards and organizations. This means that different local organizations are interlinked with each other.

This paper emanates from an overreaching interest in what consequences these multiple transitions have had for actors working at the local level. The combination of central and local responsibilities, demands on multilevel quality assurance and enhancing pressure on local school actors are challenges present in other European countries as well, not least the Nordic ones. (Moos & Paulsen). We also see a global phenomenon ofgovernment financed, privately-operated schools. (Brewer, D. J., & Hentschke, G. C) What makes the Swedish case interesting is the combining of system transitions with integration of independent schools in the public system (Erixon Arreman & Holm, Nyhlén).. The aim of the paper is to illuminate what happens in a municipality trying to handle multiple demands and transitions.  What are the challenges of local school organizations of today? What happens at the intersection between public and private organizations?

Theoretically the paper uses a curriculum theory perspective. Curriculum theory in general has an interest in the written text, the formulation the goals of society´s education (Jackson 1992). What is essential is that text-production and consumption prolongs over time, and that these activities occur within different, but interlinked, contexts (compare with for example Bernstein; Fairclough; Ball, Maguire & Braun). This makes it possible to understand the overreaching complexity. In this study we also use the Swedish curriculum theory perspective (Dahllöf; Lundgren, , Lindensjö, & Lundgren, Forsberg) as a starting point to identify some basic system structures surrounding local school leaders, as actors.

To analyze the transition of local school organizations in depth we use Rhodes understanding of governance pointing to the mutual dependence between public and private actors creating local networks. We add the perspective of multilevel governance described by for example Bache & Flinders. This is complemented by a new institutional perspective (Di Maggio & Powell) focusing on how organizations exist in society contexts where different interests, norms, rules and values coexist. In the paper we explore the linking of the perspectives and how a combined structure-actor perspective can be of value.

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