In this study, the contents imposed on the earlychildhood care and education domain are clarified about 2011 school reform in Sweden. Then, it inquires into the present condition of earlychildhood care and education of Sweden which became a part of lifelong learning system, refering the background of school reform. Furthermore, it aims at considering a "schoolification" problem. As a result of study, in this school reform, since the preschool school became one form of a "school", it became clear that new legal establishment and revision of the curriculum were performed. Although the earlychildhood care and education policy of Sweden has received high evaluation internationally, it is the next subject to ascertain whether preschool become an institution which bears the "school" education of non-duty for 1 to 5 years old, or become a place which offers activity characteristic as a cornerstone which Swedish vision called lifelong learning.

View full abstract

A purpose of this article is to analyze elder care in Sweden in 2000's focused on privatization and marketization. Since the 1980s, the theory of New Public Management has had wide-spread influence throughout Europe in the field of welfare. This is true even in Sweden that has hitherto been noted for providing welfare services through the public sector. For example, in Stockholm there are already municipalities where over 60% of care services are provided by private enterprises. The conservative coalition government started on 2006 and they introduced market-oriented legal reform; the Swedish Public Procurement Act (LOU) in 2008, the Freedom of Choice Act (LOV) in 2009. And they also started the Household Services Tax Relief (RUT-avdrag) in 2007. These reforms encourage new private care providers to come into care service market. Author tries to compare of voucher system for home help service between Stockholm and Växjö to make clear recent condition. As results of the survey, we found quite another system in these two municipalities under the same laws. Number and character of private providers, role of assessors, payment for service are different between them. This article make it clear that a lot of variation of voucher system among municipalities in Sweden.

View full abstract

Article 25 of the Swedish Employment Protection Act stipulates that a person whose employment has been terminated due to lack of work, or redundancy, has the priority right to re-employment: He/she can be preferentially employed again by the same company within nine months of the termination of the contract, provided he/she meets certain conditions. Meanwhile, the staffing industry in Sweden has grown rapidly since its legalisation in 1992. In the 2000s many companies started to use staffing agencies in order to solve labour shortages after job-cuts due to redundancy. Labour unions claimed such employers evaded their responsibilities for workers' right to re-employment by using staffing agencies instead of re-hiring the entitled former employees. The aim of this essay is to study how the priority right to re-employment has been affected by the staffing business in Sweden. Related legislation, legal cases and two new collective agreements concluded in 2010 will be presented and analysed.

View full abstract

This paper explorers Norwegian childcare policy during the post-war period. Norway was called “Housewives County” and women were not recognized as labour force in the face of labor shortages until the l960s. However, the category of “housewives” had less value because more women had participated in the labour market with the expansion of public sector. Instead of “housewives”, the value of “children” has been brought to the fore. As typified by cash benefit for childcare conducted in 1998, childcare policy in Norway was based on gender differences, emphasizing the value “for children” in these days. This research suggests that state feminism, the alliance between mother and state, was formed in dependence upon gender differences, and it is still important factor affecting Norwegian childcare policy.

View full abstract

In Sweden, national tests get support from many teachers. This paper seeks to reveal the reason of that by tracing the history of national achievement tests. Especially, the focus is on the national tests in elementary and former secondary education. The period for consideration is from the birth of "Standardized test" up to now, focusing the time of transition from "Standardized test" to "National test". From this study, the reasons of teachers' support are supposed that National test overcome problems of Standardized test and that teachers can affect the improvement of National test. The birth of National test was coupled with the start of "criterion/knowledge-referenced assessment". Originally, the biggest aim of National test were to show benchmarks of the standards for equivalent assessment in schools and to check if the students achieve these standards. However, the focus shifted to the use of the results of the Test for accountability.

View full abstract

This paper analyzes differences between regional coordination of Kansai area in Japan and Västra Götaland region in Sweden. The analysis on industrial structure and the framework of regional coordination revealed following results. Firstly, with regard to the industrial structure, both regions share a common experience of long economic stagnation caused by depressed heavy industries. This raised strong demand for regional revitalization, and as a result led to a discussion of regional coordination. Secondly, Västra Götaland is difflerent from Kansai fundamentally: the limited tasks of landsting, common administrative districts between landsting and län, the size of landsting, and the existence of EU. These differences indicate that the regional coordination in Kansai faces serious challenges in comparison to Västra Götaland.

View full abstract