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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Miranda Bryant in Stockholm

Sweden’s schools minister declares free school ‘system failure’

Lotta Edholm, Sweden’s schools minister, wearing dark-rimmed glasses and white blouse with frilled front, standing with hands behind her back against blue curtain.
Lotta Edholm, Sweden’s schools minister, has launched an investigation into friskolor. Photograph: Josefine Stenersen Nilsson/The Guardian

Sweden has declared a “system failure” in the country’s free schools, pledging the biggest shake-up in 30 years and calling into question a model in which profit-making companies run state education.

Sweden’s friskolor – privately run schools funded by public money – have attracted international acclaim, including from Britain, with the former education secretary Michael Gove using them as a model for hundreds of new British free schools opened under David Cameron’s government.

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