Neoliberal policies have invaded countries all over the world to make education systems more market-oriented and efficient (Ball, 2008; Forsey et al. 2008).  This has also happened to the Nordic countries, in which education was earlier considered as an important part of welfare policies aimed at quality and levelling out social inequality by assuring wide provision and equal conditions of access (Blossing et al. 2014; Telhaug et al., 2006). However, since the 1990s, all the Nordic countries have, to varying degrees, adopted to neoliberal policies and introduced the so called, freedom of choice and competition as some of the main drivers for changing their school systems (Dovemark et al. 2018).

Despite similarities in the way the Nordic countries developed their school systems to support the welfare political agenda of providing education for all and ensuring equality of opportunities, the overall structure of their systems differ, especially at upper secondary school level. Thus, the upper secondary school systems are seen to differ along a spectrum from an integrated model, combining vocational and academic tracks in single institutions in Sweden to complete institutional separation of these tracks in Denmark. Such differences may connect to different practices of demos and nation-building histories (Raae, 2011).

As indicated, it also varies to what extent the Nordic countries have subjected to neoliberal policies and the way they have reformed their school systems. In Sweden, privatization and freedom of choice have caused a clear increase in inequality in relation to class, ethnicity, and geographical origin (Fjellman et al., 2018) in a sometimes, tough competition among upper secondary schools to attract students. Although the underlying education policies are similar in Denmark, where the ‘school voucher’ is named a ‘value-added grant system’, the situation is different. In both Sweden and Denmark, the challenges for upper secondary schools are partly related to the increased competition for students, partly connected to general polarization tendencies. This means that the school vouchers that follow the students put institutions under economic pressure (Lundahl et al., 2013).

Further consequences of this, is a clear increase in social inequalities and that the institutions are under pressure both politically and economically (Rasmussen & Dovemark, 2022). There is a political pressure on the one hand to get as many students as possible through upper secondary education and on the other hand, to assure an appropriate distribution between the vocational and the general educational tracks (Nevøy et al. 2014). There is an economic pressure for institutional survival to attract as many students as possible and this leads to structural challenges of providing upper secondary education in all areas of the country (Rasmussen & Lolle, 2021).

As a vehicle for understanding the workings of education policies of freedom of choice and more market-oriented education, Sweden and Denmark can serve as critical cases for comparison. We are interested in comparing the discourses of freedom of choice adopted in the legislation of upper secondary education, what consequences do they have to the provision of upper secondary education in a welfare perspective, asking as main question: What are the arguments, what rationales are at hand and what premises does the discourse on free choice rest on in different texts in Denmark and Sweden?

To answer this general question, we structure our analysis in the following three sub-questions,

- What is the legal basis for the freedom of choice discourses – what is emphasised?

- How is freedom of choice interpreted at administrative and school levels?

- In which ways are school structures assuring the provision of upper secondary education?

Our general approach to the analysis is an adopted version of t critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992). By means of a three-level analysis, we attempt to provide insights into the working systems of connections between the discursive elements, the interpretations of the discourses and, the way the systems are organised, the structures and social practice. By analyzing legal texts, minutes of meetings, press releases, national statistics, and different journals and newspapers our aim is to trace how contemporary policies for ‘freedom of choice’ in the given locations have been preceded by other policies and thus to understand, not only the global, but also the temporal location of the policy reforms (Rizwi & Lingard, 2010). When the ‘freedom of choice’ discourse “enters” different national systems, it meets with particular cultural and political histories and play out according to these (Ball, 2008). For the purpose of this paper, we will carry out a juxta-positional comparison (Green, 2004) of Denmark and Sweden, addressing the main themes of the freedom of choice discourse from the perspective of each country’s own fields. In line with Green (2004, p. 42), we define ‘compare’ as examining the nature or properties of a phenomenon to discover both similarities and differences, having been melded together in the concept of comparing. The level of analysis will thus be aimed at perceiving sameness and focusing on particularities by emphasising both common themes and variations.

The freedom of choice governance of upper secondary education involves a market logic that is contradictory to central aspects of a ‘school for all’ as providing education and ensuring equality of opportunities. Thus, it illustrates that there are more subtle mechanisms of social and cultural selection, which by means of the value-added grant system tend to have the same effect as financial selection – that is, increase public spending on the privileged students and institutions (Piketty, 2017). Although the underlying education policies are similar in Denmark and Sweden the so called ‘freedom of choice’ involves an inherent contradiction to providing education and ensuring equality of opportunities for all, since the ‘free choice’ is strongly depending on location and resources (c.f. van Zanten, 2007; Fraser, 1990). The so called, freedom of choice seems to turn a blind-eye to or is uncritical to the mechanisms and processes in the marketplace that can undermine students’ possibilities of freedom of choice and thus create educational inequities. Thus, it is likely to increase segregation and polarisation and thereby pose a threat to universal provision, which will diminish general access to upper secondary education.

Ball, S. J. (2008). The Education Debate. Bristol: The Policy Press. Blossing, U., Imsen, G. & Moos, L. (2014). Nordic Schools in a Time of Change. In The Nordic education model: ‘A school for all’ Encounters Neo-liberal Policy. Springer, 1-14. Dovemark, M., et al. (2018). Deregulation, Privatisation, and Marketisation of Nordic Comprehensive Education: Social Changes Reflected in Schooling, Education Inquiry, DOI 10.1080/20004508.2018.1429 Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fjellman, A.-M., Yang-Hansen, K. & Beach, D. (2018). School choice and implications for equity: the new political geography of the Swedish upper secondary school market. Educational Review, 71, 518-539. Forsey, M., Davies, S., Walford, G., & University of Western Australia (eds.). (2008). The Globalisation of School Choice? Symposium Books. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25/26, 56–80. https://doi.org/10.2307/466240 Green, L. N. (2004) Forms of Comparison. In Deborah Cohen & Maura O’Conner (ed.) Comparison and History. Europe in cross-national perspective, 41-56, NY: Routledge. Lundahl, L., I. Erixon Arreman, A. Holm, and Lundström, U. (2013). Educational Marketization the Swedish Way. Education Inquiry 4 (3): 22620. doi:10.3402/edui. v4i3.22620. Nevøy, A., Rasmussen, A., Ohna, S. E. & Barow, T. (2014). Nordic Upper Secondary School: Regular and Irregular Programmes - Or Just One Irregular School for All? In Blossing, U., Imsen, G. & Moos, L. (eds. 2014). The Nordic Education Model: ‘A School for All’ Encounters Neo-Liberal Policy. Springer, 191-210. Piketty, T. (2017). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press. Raae, P. H. (2011). The Nordic model of education and the Danish «gymnasium». Nordic Studies in Education, Vol. 32. 311–320. Rasmussen, A. & Dovemark, M. (eds. 2022). Governance and Choice of Upper Secondary Education in the Nordic Countries. Springer. Rasmussen, A. & Lolle, E. L. (2021). Accessibility of General Adult Education. An analysis of the restructuring of adult education governance in Denmark. Adult Education Quarterly. Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing Education Policy. London and New York: Routledge. Telhaug, A.O., Mediås, O.A. & Aasen, P. (2006). The Nordic Model in Education: Education as part of the political system in the last 50 years. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, vol. 50, no. 3, 245-283. Van Zanten, A. (2007). Bourdieu as education policy analyst and expert: A rich but ambitions legacy. In B. Lingard & J. Ozga (Eds.), The RoutledgeFalmer reader in education policy and politics (254–267).