Transitions within Swedish compulsory school: Problematisations in policy

There is a shortage of policy studies concerning educational transitions, especially transitions within the compulsory schooling system. This article presents a post-structural policy study of Swedish school transition policy, drawing on Bacchi’s (2009) What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR) approach. The problem representations identified in national steering documents and local-level policies are related to a drop in attainment and could be described as a lack of information (of individual students’ needs), a lack of coordination and a lack of trust. These problematisations are connected to both an individualistic discourse and a new public management discourse. Transition is viewed as a short-term event rather than an adaptation process, and as a “special education problem”. This places teachers in the background in favour of special education needs coordinators, and measures students against a norm of not needing support during transitions. While improving possibilities to support students, these representations also risk labelling students in need of support as deviant and/or deficient.