Sweden's school deserts — municipalities without choice
In the debate about school choice we usually focus on the major cities, where parents can choose from dozens of schools. But in some of Sweden's municipalities the reality looks entirely different.
Skolkoll defines a school desert as a municipality with at most 2 active compulsory schools. These municipalities are marked in red on the map. The colour scale shows the number of compulsory schools per municipality — the darker, the more.
In some of these municipalities there is only a single compulsory school. In a few, there is no compulsory school at all — children must commute to a neighbouring municipality. School transport of more than an hour each way is everyday reality for thousands of Swedish children. It affects the ability to participate in extracurricular activities, see friends and get help with homework — factors that research shows have a significant impact on school results.
Municipalities with few schools also face another challenge: if the only school has problems there is no alternative. The Swedish Schools Inspectorate's ability to intervene is limited by the fact that a closure would leave the municipality without a school altogether. School deserts are about more than distance — they are about the absence of alternatives.
Statistics: academic year 2023/24. Source: Skolverket open data, Kolada and SCB. Processed by Skolkoll. Glossary · About the data.