The school researcher on the confidentiality decision: "Radical"

After a review of the confidentiality legislation, Statistics Sweden has decided to no longer disclose information on free schools. This can be about tasks such as the students' grades, how many people go out, and how this relates to the student composition at the school. Tasks that can thus guide the families who want to choose school for their children. Since this can affect the finances of school companies, disclosure of the information can be detrimental - and then they are covered by Statistics Sweden's statistical confidentiality, the authority reasoned.

Jonas Vlachos is a professor of economics at Stockholm University and has long researched the Swedish school, and often debates school issues. He calls SCB's reasoning "interesting".

- It will be a step in the school market 22 - because we have a school market, we cannot publish the information. But friends of the school market say we have to make them public because we have a school market. Statistics Sweden's reasoning is not unreasonable - the information is competitive - but on the other hand, the result may seem absurd, says Jonas Vlachos.

He himself is included in an inquiry into a more equivalent school under the special investigator Björn Åstrand, and says that Statistics Sweden's decision may overturn several of the arguments that were made in the investigation.

- We have of course considered questions about what information is needed and how it should be provided to school-choosing families. If this judgment stands, we may have to rethink. If it turns out to be prohibited from providing information about independent schools, a lot of our reasoning falls away - or cannot be applied to independent schools. So this is very big, says Jonas Vlachos.

Statistics Sweden's decision is so radical that it raises the question of whether it is even possible to have companies as principals for schools in Sweden, he believes.

- If central information about schools is considered to be in violation of legislation on business secrets, one must ask whether it is even possible to have companies as school principals. You have to ask that question, and it is a deep political question that I cannot answer, but that is where you end up, ”says Jonas Vlachos.