What Happens with Education when the Convention on the Rights of the Child becomes Law

The Convention on the Rights of the Child became Swedish law on the 1st of January 2020. It was preceded by a process during which stakeholder bodies expressed different views. While some have welcomed the decision and emphasized the importance of children's rights being given greater legal weight, others have warned of unpredictability, and that many court cases will now be required.

It is clear, however, that for Swedish schools, the decision to give the Convention the status of law represents another step of juridification where the legal framing of education has already been subject to major changes, especially in the last decade.

The purpose of this project is to contribute knowledge on what happens when the Convention on the Rights of the Child is enacted at different levels of the Swedish school system. In this study, the Convention on the Rights of the Child is understood as a case of juridification, which broadly means that a situation or an issue takes on a legal or a changed legal character.

To answer the purpose, the project uses a conceptual framework that has been developed to analyse the relation between juridification and education.

Two studies are conducted, one focusing on the school system at the national level (three school authorities) and one on the local level (three municipalities with two compulsory schools in each municipality). The methods used are text analysis and interviews.