The Swedish Schools Inspectorate shall be given the opportunity to stop the establishment of independent compulsory schools, if the establishments are considered to lead to the pupils in the municipality not receiving an equivalent education.

It may be that a new independent school attracts so many of the students in a municipality that a municipal school is forced to downsize or close down due to fewer students and higher costs.

- We want the Swedish Schools Inspectorate to be able to say no to a free school on the grounds that equality is deteriorating and that makes it difficult to work for an equivalent school in a municipality, says Minister of Education Anna Ekström (S) in SVT's 30 minutes.

- Today there is too little muscle for the Swedish Schools Inspectorate to be able to stop, precisely because of equivalence reasons, she says about the proposal, which will be placed on the Riksdag table this spring, says Anna Ekström.

Recently, the government also presented a proposal for a new law that will make it possible to forcibly close schools, both independent schools and municipal schools, that commit serious errors.

S wants a municipal veto

The Social Democrats have also recently presented a proposal to introduce a municipal veto.

That proposal will be up for decision at the Social Democrats' congress in Gothenburg in early November.

- The municipality should simply have the power to say no if the establishment of an independent school would impair equality, or break the school structure, Anna Ekström recently told Göteborgs-Posten about the S proposal.

Investigation: Veto not possible

The municipal veto is an issue that has previously been pushed by the Social Democrats.

In an investigation directive in 2015, the government wrote that it should formulate how municipalities can be given a decisive influence over new establishments of schools.

All bourgeois parties were opposed to the change, and the proposal was stopped after the so-called School Cost Inquiry 2016 established that such a veto was not possible to introduce. 

- It would mean that the municipality decides and not the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, said investigator Nicholas Prigorowsky to TT.