| Reduction in local authority support for adult education | | Print | |
| Hetty Rooth | 16.06.2008 | National Affairs - News items [en] [sw] | ||||
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While the state subsidy to Swedish free and voluntary adult education at adult education centres and study associations has been increasing, local authority funding has gone down. This has come in for strong criticism from the study organisations and the Government has promised to conduct a centralised debate on responsibility with the local authorities and regional governments.
In Sweden it is an important democratic principle that a significant part of the financing for universal adult education should come from state and local authority funding. Adult education must be accessible to all, and to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in particular. This means that the cost for the participants needs to be kept down and local authority funding is extremely important to the local adult education service. In the years since the year 2000 however, disturbing figures have indicated a significant imbalance between local authorities. While the state is increasingly shouldering the financial burden, many local authorities have reduced or withdrawn financial support to local adult education services. Figures from the interest group representing the study associations, the Folkbildningsförbundet (alliance of Swedish adult education study associations) show that the state financed 55 % of universal, free and voluntary adult education in 1992 and the local authority funding was 30 %. In 2007 the figures were 69 % and 18 % respectively. The Folkbildningsförbundet considers this to be unacceptable and has recently strongly criticised the local authority cut-backs. “A clear trend has emerged over recent years, a number of local authorities are failing in their national duty to support adult education, time and time again”, says Maicen Ekman, General Secretary of the Folkbildningsförbundet. The Folkbildningsförbundet now hopes that the promised talks between the alliance parties in the Government and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions on support for adult education will produce positive results. |
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