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Schoolsegregation in Sweden: challenges, opportunities and interventions

Research project

Active research

Website

Nyheter

Project size

27,9 miljoner

Project period

2025 - 2032

Project owner

Göteborgs universitet och Uppsala universitet

Research partners

The Research Group Housing, Education and Segregation (BUS)

Financier

Riksbankens jubileumsfond

Area

Society and economy Education and learning

Topic

Educational Sciences

Short description

Kajsa Yang Hansen, professor at the Department of Education and Special Education at Gothenburg University, with collegues have been granted approx. SEK 28 million from Riksbankens jubileumsfond to study schoolsegregation. The project will investigate how segregation impacts students throughout the educational system – from kindergarten to the labour market.

Current events

We have now had our kick-off for two half days! SSIS researchers gathered at the Department of Education and Special Education at the University of Gothenburg. In addition to the project's members, our stakeholders participated during day one, where we focused the kick-off on discussing the project's various work packages and the possible obstacles that we need to address in the future.

During the morning of day two, the databases that may be relevant for the project and the management of our visibility in digital channels were discussed. The kick-off resulted in clear measures to move forward with our work to map, and intervene in school segregation in Sweden.

Background

Swedish education system has become uniquely market-driven with a high degree of choice and student mobility after the school reforms in the past decades.

Coupled with the societal changes, Swedish schools have become increasingly segregated, manifested by the increasing gaps in educational resources and teaching quality, and staffing challenges along social and spatial lines and across school types. This has led the compensatory function of schools for individual life prospects and social cohesion to deteriorate, resulting in a complex interplay between family, school, region, and system-level features, which has yet to be adequately studied.

The research program SSIS aims to investigate the mechanisms and long-term consequences of segregation in all stages of schooling and the transition to the labour market.

Nine researchers united from education, sociology, child and youth studies and human geography will dedicate their expertise in four under-researched areas: social sorting of student over school stages and spaces, teacher sorting and mobility, segregation’s long-term consequences, qualitative experiences and social dynamics in educational choices and school segregation.

Relying on a mixed-methods approach, and register- and interview data, the project aims to contribute knowledge regarding school segregation, provide evidence-based recommendations to counteract school and societal segregation, in turn, enhance social sustainability and integration in Sweden.