One of the features of the Nordic welfare model has been the prioritization of a comprehensive public school model (Blossing, Imsen et al. 2014, Imsen and Volckmar 2014). However, for the last thirty years there has been increased support for private alternatives in several of the Nordic countries. This is also the case in Norway where the number of private schools and pupils attending them has more than doubled the last ten years (SSB, 2020). While private schools constituted 3,5 % of the comprehensive schools in 2003, it had increased to over 9 % in 2019 and from 2010 – 2020 the percentage of private schools had increased by 63%. In the same periode the percentage of pupils attending private schools have increased from 2,3% to 4,3% (SSB, 2020).
Within a nordic context Norway has been one of the countries that have been restrictive when it comes to privatsation and market-led policies (Wiborg 2013, Dovemark, Kosunen et al. 2018). Compared to Sweden and Denmark, Norway have had a restrictive legislation clearifying that private schools can only be established on the terms that it offer an alternative to and does not come in competition with the public school. In order to avoid segregation and commersialisation, school fees are kept low by public funding and it is prohibited to make profit on education (Sivesind 2016). However, even though Norway traditionally have stood out as restrictive when it comes to privatisation policies, the status and the balance between private and public schools are changing. Whereas this is related to how conservative governments over the last twenty years have fought to liberalise the private school legislation (and renamed it to ”the free school act”), it is also linked to other policies not directly regulating private education. In this context descentralisation policies, devolving economic responsibility from state to municipality level, have been central when private schools have replaced public schools in financially poor municipalities. While decentralisation and market-led reforms have been introduced simoultanously as privatisation policies (Bjordal & Haugen, 2021), we know little about how they interact and if and how the increased support for private alternatives are related to the development of the public school.
Inspired by a critical approach emphasising the need to investigate privatisation policies in a broader perspective and in relation to other policies, this paper examines how parents support for private schools are related to the development of the public school. Informed by research illuminating how neoliberal reforms in education can stimulate support for private alternatives (Ball & Youdell, 2008), our aim has been to study the ”process of privatisation” as related to a broader restructuring of the educational landcsape The aim is to illuminate processes and mechanisms that stimulate privatisation within education.