Lundahl, L, et al. (2020). Locality and the Prevention of Early School 
Leaving: Supporting Youth Transitions to Upper Secondary School in a Highly 
Decentralised Education System. Nordic Journal of Transitions, Careers and 
Guidance, 1(1), pp. 38–52. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/njtcg.27
RESEARCH
Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving: 
Supporting Youth Transitions to Upper Secondary 
School in a Highly Decentralised Education System
Lisbeth Lundahl1, Jonna Linde1, Joakim Lindgren1, Per-Åke Rosvall1 and 
Åsa Sundelin2
1 Umeå University, SE
2 Stockholm University, SE
Corresponding author: Lisbeth Lundahl (lisbeth.lundahl@umu.se)
The introduction programme (IP) intends to facilitate transition to upper secondary education 
among Swedish youth with incomplete compulsory education. This article aims to explore and 
understand how local preconditions interact with schools’ support for the IP students. It looks at 
the local structural and institutional preconditions, and the strategies and work of head teachers, 
programme officers, teachers, and career counsellors, working in the IP in 90 municipalities of 
three categories: commuter municipalities close to big cities, rural municipalities, and small 
cities. The analysis builds on the responses from 139 school actors to a questionnaire, and on 
public statistics. On average, the commuter municipalities enjoy the most favourable structural 
and educational conditions, while the rural municipalities are the least resourceful, e.g. in terms 
of formal professional competence. Surprisingly however, the rural contexts on average perform 
better than the other municipalities regarding the level of graduation four years after starting 
the IP. There are few systematic local differences in the work with IP students. However, the IP 
in the rural municipalities on average enjoy higher support from school leaders, have a clearer 
division of responsibilities, and separate the students spatially to a lower degree compared to 
the commuter municipalities. Systematic handover between compulsory schools and the IP is less 
common in the commuter municipalities than in the other two groups. Whether these factors 
are relevant for explaining the higher success level in the rural schools and the lower success 
level in the schools in the commuter municipalities requires further investigation.
Keywords: youth transitions; upper secondary education; introduction programme; local context
Introduktionsprogrammet (IM) avser att underlätta övergången till gymnasieskolan bland 
ungdomar med låga eller ofullständiga grundskolebetyg. Syftet med artikeln är att undersöka och 
förstå hur lokala förutsättningar interagerar med skolornas stöd för IM-eleverna. Den analyserar 
de lokala strukturella och institutionella förutsättningarna, och strategierna och arbetet hos 
rektorer, programansvariga, lärare och karriärvägledare som arbetar med IM i 90 kommuner. 
Dessa tillhör kommunkategorierna pendlingskommuner nära storstäder, landsbygdskommuner och 
mindre städer. Analysen bygger på enkätsvar från 139 skolaktörer, och på offentlig statistik. 
Resultat: Pendlingskommunerna har i genomsnitt de mest fördelaktiga strukturella och 
utbildningsförhållandena, medan landsbygdskommunerna är minst resursstarka i dessa avseenden, 
t. ex. i termer av tillgänglig formell lärar- och vägledarkompetens. Därför är det förvånande 
att landsbygdskommunerna i genomsnitt presterar bättre än de andra kommunerna i termer av 
andelen elever som avlägger examen på ett nationellt gymnasieprogram fyra år efter starten på 
IM. Det syns få systematiska skillnader i arbetet med IM-eleverna. Emellertid har IM i landsbygds-
kommunerna i högre grad stöd från skolledarna och en klar ansvarsfördelning, och separerar i 
mindre utsträckning IM-eleverna spatialt från övriga gymnasieelever än i pendlingskommunerna. 
Om dessa faktorer är relevanta för att förklara de bättre resultaten i landsbygdsskolorna och 
de sämre i pendlingskommunerna kräver dock ytterligare undersökning.
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving 39
Nyckelord: ungdomsövergångar; gymnasieskolan; introduktionsprogrammet; lokal kontext
Background and Aim
Youth who do not complete compulsory education constitute a critical group because they run higher risks 
than youth who stay in school longer, having weak connections to the labour market, socioeconomic disad-
vantages, and reduced wellbeing (Albæk et al., 2015; Halvorsen & Hvinden, 2018).1 Hence, supporting young 
people in starting and successfully completing an education at the upper secondary level has become a prior-
itised policy matter at the national and supranational levels, which inter alia has resulted in a large variety of 
programmes aimed at minimising early school leaving (ESL). Organised within the formal education system 
or outside of it, such programmes may be of preventative, intervening, or compensatory character. The meas-
ures range from universal to targeted and from temporary to more stable (Downes, 2014; European Commis-
sion, 2020; van der Graaf, Vroonhof, Roullis, & Velli, 2019). Previous studies on the effects of ESL programmes 
tend to produce disappointing results (e.g. Helgøy & Homme, 2013; Nielsen Arendt, Grevem, & Bergqvist, 
2019). However, because ESL is a complex process that involves many factors and drivers at different levels, 
it is difficult to isolate and analyse the impact of such programmes and measures (van der Graaf et al., 2019). 
Many countries offer shorter programmes to promote completion of compulsory education and transi-
tion to upper secondary level within their formal education systems, but some countries – e.g. Switzerland, 
Germany, Denmark, and Finland – offer a full extra year at the end of compulsory school designed to prevent 
ESL (Jørgensen, Järvinen, & Lundahl, 2019; Nielsen Arendt et al., 2019). The Swedish introduction program 
(IP) focussed in this article is an example of longer institutionalised preparatory programmes aiming at 
bridging the gap between lower and upper secondary education (USE). However, we have found no direct 
equivalents to the Swedish programme at the upper secondary level (also see Olofsson, 2016). Paying atten-
tion to local conditions and variations is particularly important in highly decentralised societies such as 
Sweden, where municipalities and regions differ considerably with regard to local resources, policies, and 
concrete measures for preventing ESL (Lundahl & Olofsson, 2014). In addition, the IP constitutes the part of 
the Swedish education system that has the weakest national governance (see below). Under such conditions, 
we assume that school professionals (teachers, head teachers, career counsellors) have a particularly impor-
tant role not only in enacting national goals related to ESL, but also in shaping the work of the IP, which is 
framed, delimited, and enabled by local preconditions. 
The Swedish case
Formerly characterised by strong state governance, Swedish education was subject to decentralisation, 
deregulation, and marketisation reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Lundahl, 2002). In 2015, the 
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concluded: Sweden has embraced decen-
tralisation to greater extent than most other OECD countries (ibid., p. 146). A major intention behind the far-
reaching delegation of decisions to the local level was to increase the possibilities of adapting to local needs 
and conditions, and thereby enabling higher goal attainment. However, countless evaluations have shown 
that the reforms resulted in increased inequalities between municipalities and regions. This includes the 
local resources, policies, and concrete measures for preventing ESL (Lundahl & Olofsson, 2014). Under the 
impact of New Public Management, the education system has gradually delimited professional discretion, 
for example, by more frequent grading and other assessments, public outcome ranking, and documentation, 
but, as we explain below, this transformation has only to minor extent included the IP.
Aim and disposition of the article
This article is of explorative character and aims at understanding how local preconditions of a highly decentral-
ised policy context frame and interact with local school actors’ efforts to support transitions to education and 
work among youth who have incomplete lower secondary education. More specifically we wanted to know: 
– How the organisation and practices of the IP is designed in three kinds of local contexts
– If and how varying local structural and institutional conditions are related to the IP students’ tran-
sition and completion of an upper secondary program
– How differences between local contexts in the above respects can be understood.
 1 The paper emanates from the project Moving on, Youth attending an introduction program and their career support in varying local 
contexts, funded by the Swedish Research Council (ref. no. 2017-03591).
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving40
In the following, we start by introducing the Swedish IP and then present a brief research overview, par-
ticularly of previous studies on IP, and the conceptual framework, methods and sources of the study. The 
rest of the article is devoted to our empirical findings, analysis, and conclusions. First, we summarise public 
statistical data on the structural and educational conditions of the three selected groups of municipalities, 
and this is followed by a presentation and analysis of the findings from a questionnaire study on the local 
preconditions and the design of the work with the IP. Finally, we present and discuss our major conclusions. 
The IP: A Troublesome Bridge Over Troubled waters?
In Sweden, the majority of young people with insufficient grades from the 9-year compulsory education 
transition to the IP. In 2011, the IP replaced the previous individual program existing from 1994, designed 
to suit students who were not yet prepared to participate in one of the 3-year academic or vocational pro-
grammes of upper secondary school. The aim of the new IP was to better adapt the support to the individual 
needs of the students (Regeringens proposition 2009/10:165). 
The IP consists of four (in 2011–19 five) different tracks, aiming at making the students eligible for a 3-year 
academic or vocational upper-secondary programme or preparing them for working life. Table 1 summa-
rizes the orientations and aims of the different tracks. Positioned at the upper secondary level, the Swedish 
IP has few, if any, direct international counterparts (Olofsson, 2016). 
In contrast to the other USE programmes, the IP has no national syllabus, degree objectives, or a regulated 
duration. Instead, the municipality or the private school provider has to decide on an education plan and 
an individual study plan for each student (Skollag, 2010:800). However, state governance of the IP increased 
somewhat after a decision in May 2018, according to which the local education plans have to contain informa-
tion about the purpose, main contents, and length of the programme. From 2019, IP students are also entitled 
to a minimum of 23 hours of teaching per week. Before that, no such time regulation existed. Furthermore, 
schools are obliged to assess newly arrived students’ abilities when starting the language introduction (LI) 
(Regeringens proposition 2017/18:183). In 2019, the Swedish Government decided on financial support to 
municipal and private USE providers in order to increase the educational progression of IP students to a 
national programme or other education by appointing so-called IP developers (Swedish Government, 2019). 
In 2018, when we conducted our questionnaire study, the changes mentioned above had not yet been 
realised, and the IP thus consisted of five tracks – the preparatory programme, programme-oriented indi-
vidual choice, vocational introduction, individual alternative, and LI. 
The LI expanded dramatically in 2015/2016 when Sweden had a large influx of refugees, mainly from 
Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In 2015, approximately 70,000 refugee children and young people under the 
age of 18 arrived, half of them unaccompanied minors.2 In 2016, the corresponding figure was 10,000 due 
to a sharp change in the refugee reception policy (Swedish Migration Agency, 2020). In 2017/18, more than 
half (54.5%) of all IP students attended the LI, and they constituted almost every tenth student in upper 
secondary education. Non-urban municipalities were over-represented as recipients of refugees and thus as 
providers of LI (SNAE, 2019a; Figure 1). 
 2 Statistics, Swedish Migration Agency. The absolute number of unaccompanied minors was greater in Sweden than in any other EU 
country. 
Table 1: Introductory programme tracks 2011–2019.
IP programme track Aim
Preparatory programme Replaced by 
program-ori-
ented choice
July 2019
Making students eligible for a 3-year national programme within a year
Program-oriented indi-
vidual choice
Making students eligible for a 3-year national vocational programme 
within a shorter time (the only IP alternative with entry requirements)
Vocational introduction Making students in need of a more extensive completion eligible for a 
vocational programme and prepared for work
Individual alternative Preparing the student for other education, work introduction, or work
Language introduction Making newly arrived migrant youths eligible for upper secondary 
education, focusing on the acquisition of the Swedish language
Source: Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE), 2012, 2014.
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving 41
Considering the rapidly changing conditions, it came as no surprise when the Swedish Schools Inspectorate 
identified a number of problems in its evaluation of LI in 2017. The problems found related mostly to insuf-
ficient amounts of support and guidance and too little adaptation of the education to the individual needs 
of the highly heterogeneous groups of students (Schools Inspectorate, 2017). 
The IP has had limited success if one considers the transition to a 3-year USE program. On average, 20% 
of the students who started an IP track in 2014 had received a degree from a 3-year upper secondary pro-
gramme 5 years later. The proportion varied considerably between the different tracks; 35% of the students 
who had attended a programme-oriented IP and 29% from the preparatory IP graduated from USE, but only 
14–16% of the students from the other three tracks had a degree (SNAE, 2020). However, these figures are 
misleading in a wider perspective. Because of an upper age limit of 20 years for starting studies at a national 
upper secondary programme, a high proportion of the IP students proceed to adult education instead. Of 
those beginning at an IP in 2011 and 2012, almost half had continued to adult education within 4 years 
(SNAE, 2018). The picture is also more positive when looking at former IP students’ activities more broadly. A 
follow-up study of students 5 years after starting at an IP in 2012, but not including LI,3 showed that a major-
ity were working or studying 5 years later; the lowest proportion (65%) was students from the individual 
alternative, and the highest was students from the preparatory programme (83%) (SNAE, 2019b). Four years 
after starting at an IP in 2011/12, almost 85% were either studying (69%) or working (16%) (calculations 
based on SNAE, 2018). 
Studies on Local Policies and Institutional Support to Youth Transitions
Place matters in young people’s transitions, and both the historical legacy of local place and contemporary 
neighbourhood factors affect completion of education and dropout (Martinez & Sparks, 2018). The urban 
regions and neighbourhoods have primarily been in focus when researching youth transitions, while non-
urban youth have received far less interest (Farrugia, 2014; Öhrn & Beach, 2019). 
Young people’s precariousness and marginalisation are often characterized as problems of the city areas, 
e.g. in terms of segregation, unemployment, abuse and criminality (Ball, Maguire, & Macrae, 2000). However, 
youth unemployment tends to be higher and the municipal resources to facilitate school-to-work transi-
tions are lower in the smaller municipalities outside the urban regions (Lundahl & Olofsson 2014; Rosvall, 
Rönnlund & Johansson, 2018). 
The majority of research on youth outside of the urban regions focuses on the aspirations and trajecto-
ries of young people (e.g. Cuervo & Wyn, 2017; Evans, 2016; Rosvall et al., 2018), while research on local 
institutional and policy measures to facilitate youth transitions are less frequent (for examples of work with 
such approach, see e.g. Hansson & Lundahl 2004; Lundahl & Olofsson, 2014; Palumbo & Pandolfini, 2020; 
Petrin, Schafft, & Meece, 2014). The theme of staying or leaving is predominant in research on youth careers 
and transition policies in rural areas. As we have found no international studies close to our own, in which 
researchers compare work and strategies to support youth transitions in different local contexts, our work 
adds to knowledge in the field.
 3 It is often difficult or impossible to conduct these kinds of long-term follow-up studies on young asylum seekers because they lack 
a Swedish personal identification number.
0
5
10
15
20
2013/14 2014/15 2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20
Pe
rc
en
t 
IP (%)
LI (%)
Figure 1: Students in all five IP tracks and in LI 2013/14–2019/20 as a proportion of all upper secondary 
school students (%). Calculations based on data from Statistics Sweden.
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving42
Earlier studies of the Swedish IP and the design and implementation of local youth policies more broadly 
have identified somewhat different aspects of what constitutes structural resources and problems (Lidström, 
2002). Local IP policies might also vary with the dominant political ideas in a municipality. In the 2011 
project Unsafe transitions. Youth without complete upper secondary education, officials in 280 of the 290 
Swedish municipalities responded to a questionnaire which explored strategies and measures to prevent 
and manage school dropout and non-completion of USE (Lundahl & Olofsson, 2014). Respondents in half of 
the municipalities regarded young people’s attitudes and lack of motivation as a major obstacle to increas-
ing the proportion of USE completers. Limited economic resources were the second most-frequently men-
tioned obstacle, and around a third of all municipalities, including nearly half of the smallest municipalities 
(<20,000 inhabitants) reported such limitations to be a considerable problem. Fewer than a third of the 
officials saw other factors, for example, lacking competence, political disagreement, few educational offer-
ings, and lack of collaboration as major difficulties. Overall, the local governance of prevention and manage-
ment of ESL was weak, and almost two thirds of the municipalities had action plans, but fewer than half had 
formulated concrete goals, for example, for school completion rates. Only a tenth of the municipalities allo-
cated special resources and only one fifth evaluated the measures that were adopted. Smaller municipalities 
generally invested less in such steering activities than larger ones (ibid.). 
The Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE, 2014) concluded from a survey of head teachers 
that schools in metropolitan areas seemed to have more problems adapting the IP education to individual 
needs than other municipalities. The municipalities differed most concerning collaboration with compul-
sory schools and adult education and differed less in the contacts with other upper secondary schools. The 
authors of the report assumed that schools in smaller municipalities had more favourable preconditions 
regarding collaboration and communication on students’ backgrounds and needs than schools in larger 
municipalities (SNAE, 2014). 
Henning Loeb and Lumsden Wass (2015) studied the organisation and implementation of IP in 16 munici-
palities of different types and sizes. They found extensive but unsystematic local differences in, for exam-
ple, funding of the different tracks and the distribution of students, and they argued that these variations 
primarily related to problems of understanding and ‘translating’ the national legislation and the practical 
possibilities of merging groups and classes. 
Even if youth-related measures do not seem to be a matter of political conflict (Lundahl & Olofsson, 
2014), dominant local ideologies may shape the design of IP differently. Dovemark and Erixon Arreman 
(2017) conducted interviews with teachers and head teachers in six geographically spread municipali-
ties and concluded that the organisation of IP was related to the size, traditions, and policies of the local 
authority. For example, a policy in one of the municipalities to offer an IP in most of their upper secondary 
schools reflected a political desire to avoid segregating students, and it was argued by the chair of the local 
school board that having all IP students in one or a few schools would lead to stigmatisation. In contrast, 
politicians in another municipality decided to gather all IP students in one separate school for efficiency 
reasons.
Conceptual Framework of the Present Study
What stands out in the Swedish context is the high discretion given to the local actors in the case of the IP. 
We regard the school actors in this article – head teachers, program officers, teachers, and career counsel-
lors – as street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 2010). According to Lipsky, civil servants in the public sector face 
dilemmas related to the fact that their clients’ needs will always exceed available resources. They have to 
manage this demanding situation, which is often characterised by complexity, ambiguity, and a multitude 
of sometimes conflicting objectives, by using their discretion in creative ways (ibid.). Lipsky (2010) speaks of 
actors’ pragmatic micro choices that shape the work of schools and other public organisations.
Focussing on the varying local preconditions and designs of the IP learning environments, we use a model 
from Lidström (2002) that presupposes that municipal and school actors make conscious choices and deci-
sions concerning education under the influence of local structural preconditions (incentives) in terms of 
local problems and local resources. General structural problems of the neighbourhood might, for exam-
ple, include low average incomes, depopulation, and low levels of education. Structural problems and/or 
resources more specifically related to youth transitions and IP consist, for example, of distance/closeness to 
adult education and higher education and the supply of ‘entry-level jobs’ for young people lacking occupa-
tional skills. Local resources might also include other ‘softer’ aspects such as social cohesion, openness, and 
safety. 
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving 43
We thus assume that the varying structural and institutional – here primarily educational – preconditions 
delimit and guide local actors’ problem perceptions, strategies, and concrete measures of facilitating the 
transitions from compulsory education into further studies and work. In other words, their possibilities as 
well as their responsibilities to make their own pragmatic micro choices vary with the problems encoun-
tered, resources available, and the degree to which local authorities govern the IP practices. 
Methods and Sources
This article builds on a questionnaire answered in 2018 by 139 career counsellors and head teachers working 
in IP in local contexts situated outside the larger cities but at varying distances from them. We approached 
all schools providing the IP in three groups of municipalities representing different socioeconomic and 
demographic conditions:4 (a) commuting municipalities close to big cities (≥40% of the working popula-
tion commutes to a nearby big city); (b) small city municipalities (15,000–40,000 inhabitants in the largest 
city/town); and (c) rural municipalities (<15,000 inhabitants in the largest town) – altogether 103 munici-
palities offering all or several upper secondary programmes, or, in a few cases, only the IP. The responses 
covered 90 (87%) of the addressed municipalities. The questionnaire was distributed by mail in printed 
form based on our experience this tends to generate higher response rates than web-based questionnaires. 
The questionnaire mainly consisted of multi-item scales (agreement – disagreement with statements) but 
also contained some open-ended questions. As the number of respondents was rather small and the study 
was of exploratory character rather than aiming at formal testing of hypotheses, we chose to conduct a 
descriptive analysis of the responses on the item scales. The answers to the open questions were analysed 
thematically. As a complement to the survey data, we used national and municipal statistics from Statistics 
Sweden, Swedish National Agency for Education, and the KOLADA database5 of Swedish Municipalities and 
Regions.
Results
Structural and educational characteristics of the municipalities
We find that the three groups of municipalities differ systematically across a number of structural character-
istics (Table 2).6 In general, the conditions are most favourable in the commuter municipalities close to the 
big cities and least favourable in the rural municipalities. This is true for the levels of working population 
and unemployment, average incomes, educational level, and age dependency ratios.7 The cluster of small 
cities/towns comes close to the national average in all the mentioned respects. While the populations of 
both the commuter municipalities and smaller cities/towns grew in the 5-year period preceding the data 
collection in 2018, the rural municipalities witnessed a negative population trend.
 4 We use the categorisation by the Swedish Association of Municipalities and Regions (SKL, 2017).
 5 Aiming at enabling comparisons and analyses by regions and municipalities, KOLADA collects statistical data from Statistics Swe-
den and other public databases, and from recurrent surveys (https://www.kolada.se). 
 6 However, the within-group differences are often larger than those between the groups of municipalities. 
 7 The ratio measures the population of working age (20–64 years) in relation to those of younger and older ages. Low ratios are 
preferable.
Table 2: Employment, income, demographic data, and education in the three municipal groups (2018).
Structural aspect Commuter 
municipalities
Small cities/
towns
Rural munici-
palities
All 
Sweden
Working population 20–64 years (%) 83 81.2 79.9 80.6
Unemployment 18–64 years, prop. of pop. (%) 4 6.4 7.3 6.1
Unemployment 16–24 years, prop. of pop. (%) 3.0 6.0 7.2 4.7
Average taxable income, 1000 SEK/inhabitant 231 197 180 194
Age dependency ratio 0.8 0.85 0.94 0.87
Change in population during the last 5 years (%) 8.5 4 −0.3 4.2
Inhabitants 25–64 years with a tertiary education 
degree (%)
45.5 35.6 25.9 33.3
Compilation based on searches in the KOLADA database.
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving44
Preconditions for transiting to the upper secondary level in the three municipal-
ity groups
The educational preconditions look somewhat different in the three groups of municipalities. On average 
they are most favourable in the commuter municipalities, and least so in the rural municipalities. The com-
muter municipalities have the highest average proportions of grade 9 students who meet the requirements 
of being accepted to a 3-year USE program, whether academic or vocational, and they have the lowest levels 
of newly arrived students in grade 9. Conversely, the rural municipalities have the highest proportion of 
newly arrived students in grade 9 (Table 3).
As Figure 2 shows, the differences between the three groups were especially large with regard to the 
proportions of students in the IP around 2016–2017, reflecting the wave of newly arrived asylum seekers. 
To conclude, the available structural and educational resources vary between the three groups of munici-
palities, generally meaning larger structural problems and educational challenges in the rural municipalities, 
while the preconditions on average are most favourable in the commuter municipalities close to the big cities. 
IP students’ outcomes – a paradox?
Considering the overall worse structural and educational conditions in the rural municipalities, the aver-
age outcome of the IP in this group is intriguing. Here, and contrary to what we expected, in 2017 to 2019 
a higher proportion earned a degree or study certificate8 from a three-year national upper secondary pro-
gramme within 4 years of starting at an IP compared to the small cities/towns and the commuter munici-
palities (Figure 3). In addition, the success rates rose over time in the rural municipalities; in 2019 they 
were higher than before, even though the number of IP students and particularly those attending the LI had 
started to rise considerably in the rural municipalities 4 years earlier (cf. Figure 2). The situation in the other 
two groups was more stable, even though a small improvement was visible.
 8 Students who have not passed a majority of the courses (2,250 course points out of a total of 2,500 points) and/or have failed in 
the courses that are mandatory for getting a USE degree get a study certificate.
Table 3: Proportion of students eligible for national upper secondary education in the three municipal 
groups and the proportion of newly arrived grade 9 students in 2018 (%).
Commuter Small city Rural
Grade 9 students eligible for an academic upper secondary programme 86 80 78
Grade 9 students eligible for a vocational upper secondary programme 89 83 81
Grade 9 students eligible for a vocational upper secondary programme 
(newly immigrated students excluded)
92 87 86
Newly arrived students in grade 9 (%) 5 8 12
Compilation based on searches in the KOLADA database.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
Pe
rc
en
t
Rural Small city Commuter Sweden
Figure 2: Students in the IP from 2013/14 to 2018/19 in Sweden as a proportion of all upper secondary 
school students (%) in the three categories of municipalities.
Source: KOLADA.
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving 45
Building on the questionnaire answers, we next look into the work of the IP and its preconditions in the 
three municipal contexts. 
Working with IP
On average, the head teachers and career counsellors in the rural and commuting municipalities are each 
responsible for and/or work with slightly more than 100 IP students, while in the small cities/towns they 
usually work with about 150 IP students. However, the variations are large, in particular within the group of 
rural municipalities. The LI, alone or together with one other IP track, constitutes a dominant task for 58% 
of the respondents, while 42% work with one or several of the other four tracks to a large extent. LI domi-
nates least in the smaller cities/towns – and here about half of the respondents work mainly with LI alone 
or together with another IP track, while in the other local contexts the figure is slightly more than 60%. 
Access to organisational resources 
The respondents working with IP students in the three groups of municipalities report their schools as having 
different access to qualified teachers and career counsellors and to competence development (Table 4). On 
average, the commuter municipalities and small cities/towns have good supplies of qualified teachers. Schools 
offering IP in the small cities/towns have by far the best access to trained career counsellors, and it is more com-
mon to offer competence development here. Similar to what we described above, the rural municipalities are 
the ones with the least favourable conditions regarding access to qualified teachers and career counsellors, with 
the exception of special education competence. Considering the high proportion of newly arrived students in 
the rural municipalities since the peak of asylum seekers in 2015/16, the shortage of staff with language skills 
is serious. Fewer than 60% of the respondents in the rural municipalities report having good availability of such 
competence compared to approximately 70% in commuter municipalities and small cities (Table 4). 
Figure 3: USE students from public schools with a degree or study certificate within 4 years from starting 
at an IP (%). 
Source: KOLADA.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
2017 2018 2019
rural small city/town commuter
Table 4: Access to qualified staff and competence development opportunities (N = 139).
Proportion of respondents who fully or partially agree with 
the statement (%)
Commuter Small city Rural
Most of the teachers have a teacher education degree 94 93 86
Most of the teachers have a degree in the subjects they are teaching 91 91 79
The availability of staff speaking several languages is good 71 71 57
The availability of special education competence is good 67 77 73
The availability of trained study and vocational counsellors (career 
counsellors) is good
79 92 73
Teachers and other IP staff are continuously offered opportunities 
for competence development 
60 77 64
Source: Questionnaire to head teachers and career counsellors 2018.
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving46
Local IP strategies
Only a third of the respondents answer that their municipality has an explicit strategy for raising the level of 
compulsory school completion, but a slightly higher proportion (40%) report having one for completion of 
USE. In both cases, the most frequent answer is that they do not know (44% of all respondents). There are no 
major differences between the municipality groups in this respect. Forty per cent of the respondents from 
commuter and rural municipalities report that their own schools has a strategy to increase the proportion 
of students who continue to a 3-year national programme, but there is a somewhat higher proportion in the 
smaller cities/towns (49%). One fourth of all informants are uncertain about this, and this proportion is as 
high as 40% in the rural municipalities. Thus, with little national and local steering, a majority of the schools 
providing IP seem to have a large amount of discretion and responsibility to shape strategies and measures 
to help students take the next step.
Fifty-eight respondents, primarily head teachers, answered an open-ended question about their school’s 
strategies to support the transition to a national USE programme. We cannot tell to what extent these 
descriptions refer to formalised school strategies or rather to informal strategies and measures successively 
developed by the staff. The informants emphasise student support, including work with individual study 
plans, individualising and adapting the instruction to the individual student, and strengthening pedagogical 
support and counselling, including instruction in the mother tongue of newly arrived students. Offering a 
broad range of compulsory school subjects, small study groups, and high teacher ratios are other frequently 
mentioned components. 
Almost all compulsory school subjects. Many study tutorials. Continuous study conversations with 
mentors and career counsellors based on individual study plans. Formative assessments. Validation of 
knowledge in students’ mother tongue (assistant head teacher, commuter municipality). 
Large flexibility in creating the student’s individual study plan in order to get the eligibility that is 
missing. Staff density to create safe relationships that facilitate studies (head teacher, smaller 
city/town).
Students in the IP work together in small groups with lots of extra support from teachers, special 
teachers, counsellors, and tutors to get the best possible preconditions to continue their studies (teacher, 
rural municipality).
We do not see any marked differences between the groups of municipalities in terms of strategies for sup-
porting student transitions to work and/or higher education. 
A smaller proportion of the responses to the open-ended questions, mainly from rural municipalities, con-
cerned the development of programme plans, routines, and schedules. A few responses mention support for 
the transition from compulsory school to the IP and collaboration with adult education. Finally, another small 
group of responses relate to strategies for competence development and other measures involving IP staff.
The organisation has developed a lot in the last years, including study plans, schedules, and routines, 
[and we have] individualised the instruction – the students study what they need. We have also received 
state funding for developing the IP; this has contributed considerably to the development of the pro-
gramme (assistant head teacher, rural municipality). 
The inner workings of IP
Almost all municipalities conduct early mapping and assessment of the students’ knowledge (Table 5). 
A majority of the respondents report that the design of the individual study plan is primarily in line with 
the student’s needs and interests, but at the same time almost as large a proportion states that the study 
plan is rather standardised. When the question concerns individualisation of education, the answers differ 
between the rural municipalities and small cities/towns on the one hand and the commuter municipalities 
on the other. More than 80% of the former reported adapting the education to the individual student to 
a high extent, but fewer than 70% of the latter report doing so. A small majority of all informants answer 
that the education is relatively standardised. Two thirds of the schools in commuter municipalities and 
small cities/towns tutor students in their mother tongue, but only somewhat more than half of the schools 
in rural municipalities do so. A majority of all schools offer a broad variety of courses at the compulsory 
level, ranging from slightly below 80% in the commuter municipalities to more than 90% in the rural 
municipalities. 
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving 47
Research overviews indicate that having access to career education and high-quality counselling may be 
crucial, both from learning, social, and economic points of view (Hughes, Mann, Barnes, Baldauf, & McKeown, 
2016). Considering their risky situation (see the introduction section above), this is probably even more true 
for the IP students. However, only three quarters of all respondents fully or partly agree that the IP students 
learn about different educational alternatives through recurring activities, and even fewer – two thirds of 
all respondents – fully or partly agree that the students learn about the labour market through such activi-
ties. A clear majority (83 to 95%) of the respondents in the three groups of municipalities agree partially or 
fully that the IP students have good possibilities to discuss future educational and vocational choices with a 
career counsellor. Also, a majority (77%) reports that career counsellors, teachers, and other staff collaborate 
in giving the IP students career education and counselling (Table 6).
Overall, we do not find any considerable differences between the three groups of municipalities when it 
comes to learning about careers and career counselling, but there is a tendency that commuter municipali-
ties rank lower in the above aspects than the other groups. Learning about the labour market through recur-
rent activities, however, constitutes an exception.
Organisation of work, leadership support, and collaboration
There are notable differences in the answers from the three groups of municipalities concerning the integra-
tion or separation of IP students in relation to other USE students, the division of responsibilities between 
the actors involved, and the perceived support from school leadership – and here the commuter municipali-
ties stand out more negatively than the other groups of municipalities (Table 7).
Only two thirds of the respondents from commuter municipalities feel supported by the leaders of the 
school, but almost nine out of ten respondents in the other local contexts report feeling supported. Nine 
out of ten schools in the rural municipalities report having a clear division of responsibilities between the 
actors involved in the IP, but fewer than seven out of ten in the commuter municipalities tell about such 
clear divisions. Finally, the schools in the rural municipalities clearly differ from the others by having a lower 
degree of spatial separation of the IP – 13% report this as compared to 21% in the small cities/towns and 
Table 5: Design and work of IP.
Proportion who fully or partially agree to the statement (%) Commuter Small city Rural
Students’ previous knowledge is mapped and assessed at an early stage 79 86 80
The individual study plan is primarily designed in line with the student’s needs 
and interests
71 79 82
The individual study plan is relatively standardised 60 72 64
There is a broad supply of compulsory school subjects 79 86 93
Students are tutored in their mother tongue 67 67 56
The education is adapted to the individual student’s needs to high extent 64 88 82
The education is relatively standardised 57 51 56
Source: Questionnaire to head teachers and career counsellors in 2018.
Table 6: Career counselling as part of the IP.
Proportion who fully or partially agree with the statement (%) Commuter Small city Rural
The student learns about educational alternatives through recurrent activities 67 83 73
The student learns about the labour market through recurrent activities 67 64 61
There are good opportunities to discuss future educational and vocational 
choices with a career counsellor 
83 95 86
Career counsellors, teachers, and other staff collaborate in matters concerning 
students’ educational and vocational choices
71 85 77
Source: Questionnaire to head teachers and career counsellors in 2018.
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving48
27% in the commuter municipalities. One should, however, keep in mind that a majority in all three groups 
did not report such a separation.
Collaboration with other actors
In an evaluation of the IP, the Swedish National Authority for Education (SNAE, 2014) related the varying 
possibilities of adjusting IP to the individual students’ needs to the extent to which schools received infor-
mation about the students from their compulsory schools, The SNAE (2014) concluded that schools in the 
metropolitan areas had fewer opportunities for getting such information than schools outside of the big 
city areas. We find a similar trend in our study. In the commuter municipalities close to big cities, two thirds 
of the respondents (67%) agree fully or partially with the statement, ‘There is a systematic handover between 
the compulsory schools and the IP’. The corresponding proportion is considerably higher in the other two 
groups (82% and 83%). The average proportion of schools that collaborate with adult education is on aver-
age reported to be even lower, at between 55% and 60%, but with little difference between the groups of 
municipalities. On average, only half of the respondents report a well-developed collaboration with the local 
labour market – the highest proportion (59%) being in the small cities/towns. 
Conclusions and Final Discussion
How is the organisation and inner work of the IP shaped in three groups of local 
contexts?
A majority of those working with the IP seem to have considerable discretion and responsibility to shape 
support strategies and the measures they use to assess this support, as they report receiving little steering 
or direction from the state and municipalities. The institutional conditions vary between the three local 
groups; in general, the rural municipalities tend to have lower proportions of qualified teachers and career 
counsellors than the other two groups. Notably, the access to teachers who can assist students in the lan-
guage introduction in their mother tongue is markedly lower in the rural municipalities. This poses chal-
lenges as they are also the municipalities who received most newly arrived migrants. On the whole, however, 
we find no marked or systematic differences in how the schools in the three local contexts work to support 
the students in teaching, counselling and other activities. 
Are varying local structural and institutional conditions related to the IP students’ 
transition and completion of an upper secondary program?
We expected that worse structural and institutional preconditions would result in more difficulties and less 
successful work with the IP in the rural municipalities than in the other municipalities. However, this expec-
tation was not confirmed. According to statistical data on levels of graduation or getting a study certificate 
from USE 4 years after starting an IP, the rural contexts perform better than the commuter municipalities 
and smaller cities/towns, and this tendency has grown stronger over the last few years. 
How can we understand such relationships?
We can neither explain our findings from the present explorative study nor dismiss structural and educa-
tional preconditions as being nonessential for the work and success of IP at the local level. Rather, this study 
raises questions about possible additional factors, some of which we discuss below, that may constitute 
the basis for further investigations. Hence, we would like to expand the number of municipality types and 
municipalities in a second survey. We also want to complement these data with interviews targeting leading 
officials at the school and municipal levels. Such an interview study has started.
Table 7: Organisation, support, and collaboration.
Proportion who fully or partially agree with the statement (%) Commuter Small city Rural
IP education and its students are geographically separated from the rest of the 
school
27 21 13
IP education and its students are highly integrated in my school’s work 44 63 58
The work with the IP is actively supported by the leaders of my school 67 88 87
There is a clear division of responsibilities between the different actors working 
with the IP
68 81 89
Lundahl et al: Locality and the Prevention of Early School Leaving 49
Discussion
Do the rural municipalities’ relatively greater success and the relatively larger failure of the commuter 
municipalities result from factors that do not primarily relate to the quality of education and schools? We 
can think of at least two such ‘sources of error’: local differences in grading and different availabilities of 
alternatives to participating in and completing USE. In Sweden, the teachers are responsible for grading 
and examinations, not external institutions as in many other countries. In this study, one hypothesis which 
calls for future exploration could be that grading differences exist between rural and commuter/urban 
schools. Potentially, this hypothesis may explain our findings if future research finds that rural schools tend 
to give higher grades than municipalities close to larger cities. There is little evidence to support such a 
hypothesis, as the results of several research studies are showing that the tendency for grade inflation is by 
far highest in situations where many schools are competing over students (e.g. Vlachos 2010; Wennström 
2019). This is not the case in the rural regions. A second factor could be the differing local availability of 
unskilled employment. Such employment opportunities may present a possibility for youth to start work-
ing earlier. Previous research has shown that this is an attractive option for many young people who are 
tired of school (e.g. Lundahl, Lovén, Holm, Lindblad, & Rolfsman, 2020). Because the urban regions offer 
more jobs to low-educated youth than rural regions, this could be one plausible explanation to why fewer 
IP students complete upper secondary studies in the commuter municipalities than in the other two local 
clusters studied here.
As was noted above, we found few systematic differences between the three groups of municipalities in 
how school professionals work with the IP students. However, there were some variations with regard to 
the organisation and support of IP that work in favour of the rural municipalities and/or speak in the nega-
tive for the commuter municipalities. The lower reported support from school leadership in the commuter 
municipalities is thus notable. Further, the division of responsibilities is clearer and the separation of IP from 
other upper secondary programmes is less frequent in the rural municipalities. Furthermore, it is more com-
mon to have a systematic handover from compulsory schools to the IP in the rural municipalities and small 
cities/towns than in the commuter municipalities. These factors could be relevant for explaining the lower 
success level in the commuter municipalities and conversely the higher success rates in the rural schools. 
However, the reason behind these local differences still needs to be explained. One such possible explana-
tion goes back to Lidström’s (2002) model of local resources and local problems and the notion of ‘soft 
structural conditions’. One hypothesis for a future study would be that municipalities in rural and sparsely 
populated regions, characterised among other things by ageing and depopulation, are more dependent on 
educating, supporting, and retaining young people, including the ones who initially are failing school and 
the newcomers from other countries, than in the urban commuting municipalities. In other words, these 
young people constitute local resources rather than mere problems in the rural contexts. In an ongoing 
study based on interviews among ‘street-level bureaucrats’ who are working with IP in six municipalities 
of the same kinds as were addressed in the questionnaire study, we explore how teachers and counsellors 
perceive the challenging situation of giving support to the IP students that is adapted to their highly varying 
needs under highly varying institutional and structural conditions. Here we hope to find some answers to 
the questions raised above, including the possible perception of students as resources and/or problems and 
related micro-choices of the involved school actors. 
Ethics and Consent 
This research followed the standards of Good research practice (Swedish Research Council, 2017). The 
regional research ethical board approved the project in May 2018 (ref. no 2018/173-31).
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.
Author Information
All the listed authors meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship.
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Submitted: 29 June 2020   Accepted: 28 October 2020   Published: 28 December 2020
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