International education policy highlights career guidance as a pivotal tool for improving pupils' educational choices and facilitating educational transitions for integration into labour markets (OECD, 2024). This paper critically examines how educational choices are constructed as problematic within guidance policy proposals on compulsory and upper secondary schools in Sweden. This paper aims to problematise the assumptions underlying the relationship between educational choices, subsequent educational transitions, and social mobility as presented in policy for guidance.It is arguedthat this framing risks perpetuating inequalities in educational transitions and social mobility.

The analysis provides insights into how compensatory work in guidance aligns with the political ambitions of informed educational choices in historical contexts.  Although the study focuses on Swedish education policy, the findings can inform other national or educational contexts.

The methodological approach is based on Bacchi’s (2009) framework What’s the problem represented to be? It consists of a set of questions: 1.What’s the ‘problem’ represented to be in a specific policy or policy proposal? 2.What presuppositions or assumptions underpin this representation of the ‘problem’? 3. How has this representation of the ‘problem’ come about? 4.What is left unproblematic in this problem representation? Where are the silences? Can the ‘problem’ be thought about differently? 5.What effects are produced by this representation of the ‘problem’? 6. How/where has this representation of the ‘problem’ been produced, disseminated, and defended? How has it been (or could it be) questioned, disrupted, and replaced? Based on the aim of this study, we selected Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 for our analysis. Guided by these questions, the analysis explores the assumptions and presuppositions underpinning how educational choices and guidance are articulated. The empirical data consist of policy documents from 1992 to 2022, including curricula, Government Official Reports, and evaluations by authorities.

The findings illustrate that the predominant problem representation frames pupils’ cognitive skills as central to educational choices, emphasising their ability to transcend social norms and ultimately enabling social mobility. This perspective individualises responsibility for navigating educational transitions. Firstly, the policy’s problem representation is described as a 'lack' or 'deficiency' of knowledge within the discourse of informed educational choices and awareness of social norms. Informed educational choices are anticipated to be fostered through self-knowledge, self-realisation, and self-reflection. However, how these choices are assessed – whether by ability, capability, or potentiality – reflects discourses of individualisation, responsibility, knowledge-based competition, and future orientation. In this process, pupils are shaped as ‘competent’ subjects (Dahmen, 2021) and autonomous subjects (cf. Romito, 2017). Drawing on Foucault, these subjectivities are shaped by a ‘dividing practice’ (Foucault, 1983) which separates individuals into those who are deemed competent and ‘not yet’ competent to make adequate choices, as well as those considered autonomous and ‘not yet’ autonomous in making independent choices. Secondly, the policy’s expectation of the compensatory work in guidance is constructed as a ‘solution’ to enhance educational choices that lead to further education, and, implicitly, individual social mobility. This assumption is based on meritocratic ideals of individual action and social mobility. It is argued that the compensatory work in guidance may unintentionally reproduce the gap between individuals classified as competent and those deemed not yet competent. Competencies are not a fixed attribute; instead, those classified as competent continuously develop and enhance their abilities, perpetuating division. It risks reproducing and consolidating inequalities within the education system, as it fails to consider a ‘deeper, more structural understanding of equality’ (Ingram & Gamsu, 2022, p. 27).

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