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EDUCATION

Police raid occupied youth centre in Lund

Ten people were arrested following a dawn police raid on a Romani youth centre in Lund in southern Sweden.

Published: 18 August 2009 11:24 CEST

The arrested people were all aged between 18 and 25-years-old and had been occupying the Romano Trajo after-school recreation centre in the Norra Fäladen area of the city.

The occupying youths were demonstrating as part of a network calling itself “Lund residents against cutbacks”.

The arrests were conducted without any major incidents. Two of the occupiers attempted to flee but were swiftly apprehended by police.

The ten people were later transferred to Lund police station and are being held on suspicion of aggravated trespass and criminal damage.

Romano Trajo opened in 1989 to provide support to Romani children living in the area.

In 2004 the centre received the City of Lund’s integration prize. But this year it was announced that the centre, in the face of outspoken protests, would be closed.

Lund’s child and education committee considered that the services offered by Romano Trajo could be managed by other recreation centres in the area.

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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