Current ambitions by the Swedish government to define the objectives and necessary actions for realising the SGDs and particularly SDG 4 are highlighting the linkage between education for sustainable development (ESD) and quality education. Recently, during a national launch of the Global Education Monitoring Report, the Swedish minister of education underlined that Sweden can be seen to very much live up to all targets for SDG 4 except 4.7 which relates to education for sustainable development as well as qualitative aspects of education and learning. Further, the minister underlined that working with this target is a challenge both with regards to what is to be done and how progress is to be measured. In principle, the challenge within education is, according to the by the minister outlined reasoning, to define and address how the quality in education can be increased, where quality is not only to be understood in terms of reproduction of competences in mathematics and literacy but rather defined in terms of the principles of education for sustainable development. This presentation aims to give an outline of the linkages between SDG 4 and the GAP on ESD in the Swedish policy context. Further, it aims to provide perspective on an ongoing policy formation process by putting ambitions and existent frameworks into a historical context that has shaped structures in the Swedish education system. It will be here the objective to generate perspectives on how the SDGs and the GAP on ESD as global policy frameworks provide constructive input into national education reform efforts as well as to highlight tensions between national ambitions, prevalent national structures and global education policy frameworks. The presentation will be structured around the following topics a) conceptual linkages between quality education and education for sustainable development and b) current challenges to and ambitions for promoting quality education as part of Swedish engagement with the Agenda 2030.

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