820 compulsory schools have a non-municipal operator (a limited company, a foundation or an association), against 3,803 run by a municipality or municipal federation. That is an independent share of 17.7% of the 4,623 units classified as municipal or independent. One further unit has another or unknown operator type and is reported separately.
An independent school — "friskola", sometimes called a private school — is privately operated but publicly funded: it receives the same pupil voucher as a municipal school, may not charge tuition, and follows the same national curriculum. What differs is the operator and the admission criteria (waiting time, sibling priority or geographic priority).
The share is not the same in every school form. Counted separately, 443 of 1,260 municipal or independent upper-secondary schools (35.2%) and 2,558 of 8,798 municipal or independent preschools (29.1%) are independently run.
The share also varies sharply between municipalities — metropolitan regions run well above the national figure and many rural municipalities have no independent school at all. A large part of the independent sector is owned by a handful of school groups.
The register is a moving target: Skolverket adds new school units and deregisters closed ones continuously, so the figure changes between school years and even within one. Skolkoll syncs the register weekly and every count on this page is recomputed from that sync.
- Independent compulsory schools820
- Municipal compulsory schools3,803
- Independent share17.7%
- Independent upper-secondary schools443
- Independent preschools2,558
Data from Skolverket + Skolkoll calculation. Last updated 2026-10-06. Spot any errors? Submit a correction.