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OFFBEAT

Official fired for talking on her mobile phone

A local education official from southern Sweden has been sacked after she disclosed sensitive information about colleagues during mobile phone conversations which were easily overheard by others.

On more than one occasion in recent weeks Bodil Karsvall, the head of the child and youth administration in Karlskrona municipality, was overheard gossiping about school employees on her mobile phone when riding on a train.

In one instance, Karsvall spoke openly to the principal about a teacher, mentioning the teacher by name and discussing details about the teacher’s personal life, well within earshot of fellow passengers, the local Blekinge Läns Tidning (BLT) reports.

Someone who overheard the conversation, the tone of which was described as “mocking”, alerted municipal officials about Karsvall’s lack of discretion.

Shortly after the incident, the local teachers’ union announced it had “lost confidence” in Karsvall.

“She’s not going to work as the head of schools if the staff doesn’t have any confidence in her,” local union chair Hans Bengtsson told Sveriges Radio (SR) last week.

The union in turn urged municipal leaders to take action, and on Friday Karlskrona municipality announced that Karsvall’s time as a city leader was over.

“The political leadership of Karlskrona municipality no longer has confidence in Bodil Karsvall in her role as head of child and youth administration,” the municipality said in a statement.

“Bodil Karsvall will leave her job as an administrative head as soon as terms for her departure are negotiated.”

In a message to colleagues, Karsvall said the decision was “really sad and not what I wanted”, the local Sydöstran newspaper reported.

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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.

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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