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The increasing use of 'the private' as a mean of delivery of public service, including several education reforms, such as decentralization, free school choice and a liberal tax-funded voucher system have paved the way for a rapid increase of upper secondary schools in Sweden. There is a strong competition between these schools. Today, half of all schools at the post 16-level are run by municipalities, while the rest is run by private owners, mainly organized as large school concerns. About 25% of all upper secondary students study at an independent school (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012). As Bernstein stated already in 1996, the market relevance has become the key-orientating criterion for the selection of discourses. The 'capitalisation', which is making public schools into commodity producing enterprises (Rikowski, 2003) is now a fact. Furthermore the education market is no longer simply a matter of choice and competition, according to Ball (2004) it is a sophisticated system of goods, services, experiences and routes. In parallel with an increasing competition there is still political consensus in Sweden regarding the education's mission of being socially compensatory and inclusive. However recent statistics and research highlight alarming results of increased segregation between municipalities, schools and between students (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012; Östh, Andersson and Malmberg, 2012).

This article explores young people's upper secondary school choices after recent reforms of school choice and competition in Sweden, drawing on interviews with students and school staff. The respondents identify important motives and strategies in students' school choices, for example, the character of school and schooling, the influence of marketing and education policy, as well as young people's identities and positions. Young people's 'horizons of action' and decision-making seem to vary, according inter alia to the degree of urbanity of their geographical locality and exposure to competition. Gender-, ethnicity- and social class-related factors also appear to be influential. We conclude that the school choice and competition reforms draw schools' attention to students' preferences, but the motive for the interest seems to have little to do with a concern to help young people to make educational school choices and future school-to-work transitions. Finally, we advocate modifications in the provision of career information and guidance.

Sweden has commonly been regarded as a striking example of a social democratic welfare-stateregime (Esping-Andersen 1996), characterized by strong state governance and active involvementin welfare matters. In the last two decades, however, the Swedish public sector and educationsystem have been radically and extensively transformed in a neo-liberal direction, a move that waspreceded by extensive decentralization of decision-making from the state to municipalities andschools. In this article the scope, character and some of the consequences of internal and externalmarketization of Swedish education in the early 2000s are summarized, and the impact ofcompetition on the internal workings of upper secondary schools is highlighted in particular.We conclude that the external marketization of education has proceeded a long way and Swedenalso fully embraces new public management, i.e. 'inner marketization', of education in mostrespects. However, aspects of the older social democratic policy paradigm are still visible withregard to the assigned functions, values and governance of education.

Part I: Gendered continuities and challenges in education/higher education – policy/politics -- Chapter 1. Reflections on the emergence, history and contemporary trends in Nordic research on gender and education (Lahelma) -- Chapter 2. How gender and economic, cultural and social capital influence educational decisions of students in the Croatian context (Baranović) -- Chapter 3. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: How can we challenge racism, sexism and white privilege in the globalized academy? (Mählck) -- Chapter 4. Intersectional Gender Analysis in Curriculum for Primary Teacher Education in Sweden (Risenfors) -- Part II: Challenging inequalities in formal and informal educational contexts -- Chapter 5. Women's Right to Lifelong Learning and Empowerment – Informal training program in a Turkish NGO (Öztan) -- Chapter 6. Learning to resist "othering" – On the Swedish Urban Justice Movement's learning processes in racialized urban landscapes (León-Rosales) -- Chapter 7. Citizenship in the Making in Turkey: From gendered passive citizens to the enacting citizens (Kancı) -- Chapter 8. The making of neo-liberal boys: Unpacking the construction of 'real boyness' in Indonesian and Swedish Early Childhood Education settings (Adriany) -- Chapter 9. Gendered discourses on performances, work and talent in Swedish secondary school (Holm) -- Chapter 10. The gender gap in education: teachers' and study counsellors' stereotyped perceptions (Perander) -- Chapter 11. Gender in language education and civic orientation for adult migrants in Sweden – A study of policy documents and teaching materials (Carlson).

The last 40 years have seen great political attention paid to issues of inclusion in education, both from international organisations and also individual nations. This flexible concept has been adopted enthusiastically in education reforms concerned with increased standardisation of teaching and learning, decentralisation of education management, reduced teacher autonomy and marketisation of school systems. This paper draws from a research project that explores inclusion as part of the education transformations in England and Sweden. These two countries have been very different in their state governance and welfare regimes, but have been following similar directions of reform in their education systems. The paper evaluates the changing policy assumptions and values in relation to inclusion in the schooling changes of the last few decades, through an analysis of policy contexts and processes, and a presentation of selected empirical material from research in the two countries. We argue that, despite the similar dominant discourses of competition and marketisation, the two education systems draw on significantly different paradigms of operationalising inclusion, with distinct outcomes regarding equality. ; Inclusive and competitive? Changing understandings and practices of social inclusion in upper secondary