The Swedish Government reform project Collaboration for Better Schools (CBS) started in 2015 (The Government remit U2015/3357/S) partly triggered by an OECD (2015) review arguing that many Swedish schools needed qualified support, and that the Swedish school system were in need of urgent reform. The review suggested, among other things, nationwide mobilization for and a unified commitment to school improvement among relevant parties within or linked to the school system. Similar to many other nations (Blossing, 2010; Boyd, 2021; Schueler et al, 2021), the CBS is targeting struggling schools, and, particularly, schools lacking capacity to improve their own education practices, such as teaching and learning for all students regardless of their background and capabilities. In this light, the CBS is hardly unique in 21^st century education largely shaped by a globally structured agenda for education revolving around quality and results for all without exception (Dale, 2005; Rönnström, 2019).

However, although many nations are addressing similar challenges with regard to struggling schools facing difficult challenges, they differ in the ways they respond to, target, intervene in, or support such schools. In Sweden, more than 500 hundred struggling schools (and their local education authorities (LEA)) have been or are participating in the CBS. The Swedish National Agency of Education (NAE) invites selected schools to three-year long multi-level partnerships and research-based collaboration aiming at capacity building (Rogberg et al, 2021). The CBS is largely about capacity building in schools lacking capacity for quality education and necessary change and improvement. The CBS is challenging for the participating schools because of the challenges they face. However, it is also challenging for all parties involved because of the collaborative innovation and the partner relationships required.

Apart from teachers, first teachers, middle managers, principals, school managers and other key agents among LEA’s, and the specially trained agents from the NAE, more than 150 teachers and researchers from Swedish universities are involved in multi-level partnerships. The CBS requires partnerships between school professionals, NAE agents and researchers depending on one another in all phases of the improvement work, such as problematizing, data-analyzing, focusing and goal setting, mobilization and resourcing, iterative intervention and intelligent implementation, and, following up and adjusting interventions. The multi-level partnership developed refers both to a nationwide collaboration within the Swedish school system, and collaboration between different organizational levels of the participating LEA’s. The CBS requires collaboration based on partnerships (Robertson, 2016), but when it started nearly a decade ago there were no prior experience of such required partnerships among the parties involved. Moreover, the NAE and the partner universities had very limited experience of working together with struggling schools facing difficult challenges, and they were usually drawing their resources from research based on successful schools.

Consequently, the CBS required capacity building among all involved in order to support pre-schools and schools lacking capacity for quality education and school improvement. In hindsight, the implementing the CBS has meant that the partners involved have learned the way forward together through the required partnership they formed (Rogberg, 2021). In this paper we describe, analyze and critically examine the CBS as multi-level partnership and research-based collaboration targeting schools facing difficult challenges. In particular, (1) we describe the emergence of partnerships between the partners involved in the CBS, and the nature of the partnerships developed 2015-2024; (2) we analyze and critically examine to what extent the partnerships developed are experienced as enabling or disabling in school improvement; and, (3) we suggest four ways in which partnership-based collaboration is essential to improving capacity building in schools facing difficult challenges.

This paper is part of a larger research study on partnership-based collaboration for capacity building in schools facing difficult challenges. The present study draws from what Hopkins et al (2014) and Håkansson and Sundberg (2016) refer to as the fourth generation of school improvement (See also Reynolds et al, 2014), theories and research on school and school system capacity building (Rönnström, 2022; Stoll, 2009) and partnership models for building individual and organizational capacity in schools (Robertson, 2016; 2022). This study builds on data collected from partners within the CBS which we have collected in a CBS-database 2016-2024. In this study we analyze data from 50 LEA’s participating in the CBS in terrms of documents and reports written during the three-year long partnership. We analyze reports and documents produced by 5 university research- and development teams 2020 - 2024. We also analyze documents and reports written by the NEA specialist in the course of their CBS work. One type of data is documents that partners produce in the three-year school improvement partnerships in different phases of the process: analysis-goal setting-planning-intervening- follow up and evaluation. Theese are data all partners are required to produce during the three-year long commitment. The second type of data are collected from special seminars in which the partners explicitly work together in order to improve or problem solve their own collaboration and partnerships. We have collected data from 12 seminars in which NAE staff meet with partner universities. Alla data are analyzed with tools drawn from the frameworks above.

The preliminary findings are as follow. We argue that the multi-level partnership and research-based collaboration targeting schools facing difficult challenges developed within the CBS has resulted in a an emerging nation-wide and system-deep school improvement capacity among partners within or linked to the Swedish school system. In the beginning, it was rare for schools, the NAE and universities to collaborate and develop knowledge and strategy together. Collaboration was usually restricted to professional development courses, expert assignments, expert advice, etc. However, the CBS collaboration has developed into partnerships showing reciprocity, dialogue and shared commitments over time, which challenges conventional roles and responsibilities in collaboration, and expectations of what one party can expect from the other. Consequently, partnership-based collaboration with schools facing difficult challenges is rewarding but also truly challenging for all concerned. In order to cope with their new roles as partners, the universities have developed national and local organisation for mutual learning and capacity building as they felt the need for innovation. When we trace the developments of the CBS over time, we can see a shift in the understanding of the problems and dynamics of school improvement on the one hand, and of school improvement approaches and processes on the other linked to the partnerships developed. The four points below can summarize the development of the CBS as a multi-level partnership and research-based collaboration targeting schools facing difficult challenges: from courses and training to locally adapted context sensitive three-year capacity building support; collaboration from linear models and short term commitments towards iterative models and long term commitments; from assuming tame problems and technical problem solving towards mobilization for wicked and collaborative problem solving; and from isolated interventions directed at different organizational levels independent of one another to coordinated and co-dependent interventions at different organizational levels.

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