Iceland

comprehensive school. A political focus was on accountability, or outcomes as measured in studies like PISA. There has been a development from welfare state to competitive state, but there has also been an advance in social justice in the comprehensive nonstreamed schooling. It is necessary that a School for All can adapt structurally to the needs of modern society which includes the development of talents of all children and achieving differentiated teaching. It is nevertheless a challenge that more parents are choosing private schools for their children (from 6% in the postwar era to 14% in 2010).

Iceland

Iceland is on a similar route as the other Nordic countries, where privatisation has become an ‘inevitable’ part of the education system. Internal privatisation is shaping the sector, based on technical methods of delivering predetermined outcomes. External privatisation, in the form of educational programmes, is growing along with charter schools.107 A part of the neoliberal agenda is to systematically blur or obscure the boundary between public and private, to weave itself into the fabric of daily life, and this is what has happened in most of the Nordic countries.108, 109, 110 The implementation varies somewhat, but there are also similarities, especially along the early childhood spectrum.

The Icelandic preschool system has according to researchers been reshaped over the last 10 to 15 years: it has moved from being a financially homogenous system in terms of provision and funding towards a market-driven system. This has entailed: (a) more standardised objectives and output but concurrently a deregulation of the private sector, which is then able to choose customers and fuel school choice; (b) intensified neo-managerialism evident in the increased size of the preschools (for example, in 2000 the biggest preschool had 128 children but by 2014 the largest preschool had 211 children); (c) opening up provision to the private sector to run schools and programmes paid for by taxation. The growth of behavioural cookie-cutter programmes sold to schools is an indication of pedagogical standardisation and the rise of the SEN (special education needs) industry in Iceland.111 Lastly, it has entailed

107 Dýrfjörð, K., & Magnúsdóttir, B. R. (2016). Privatization of early childhood education in Iceland.

Research in Comparative & International Education, 11(1), 80–97. 108 Ahrenkiel, A., Nielsen, B. S., Schmidt, C., Sommer, F. M., & Warring, N. (2012).

Daginstitutionsarbejde og pædagogisk faglighed. Frederiksberg: Frydenlund. 109 Arnesen, A.-L., Lahelma, E., Lundahl, L., & Öhrn, E. (Eds.). (2014). Fair and competitive? Critical perspectives on contemporary Nordic schooling. London: Tufnell Press 110 Lundahl, L., Erixon Arreman, I., Holm, A., & Lundström, U. (2013) Educational marketization the

Swedish way. Education Inquiry, 4(3), 497-517. 111 Tomlinson, S. (2012). The irresistible rise of the SEN industry. Oxford Review of Education 38, 267–286.