INSTRUCTIONAL TIME TEACHING SUBJECTS, ALLOCATION OF TIME AND INSTRUCTIONAL TIME IN THE SWEDISH SCHOOL SYSTEM Florian Waldow Time allocation at the central and local levels THE CENTRAL STATE AND THE MUNICIPALITIES The Swedish school system is a highly comprehensive one, with grundskola (compulsory school) for 7- to 16-year-olds and the non-compulsory gymnasieskola (three-year upper secondary school) as the main types of school. Since the decentralization reforms of the 1990s (Daun, 1997), municipalities (290 in total) have been given considerable liberty in organizing education in their area. How much freedom individual schools enjoy depends very much on the municipality. As a general rule it can be said that municipalities governed by the Social Democrats tend to favour a higher degree of central steering by the municipality, while municipalities governed by the non-socialist block tend to give more freedom to individual schools (interview K.S.). 1 Original language: English Florian Waldow (Germany) Currently a research and teaching assistant at the Comparative Education Centre, Humboldt- University, Berlin. He has been a guest researcher at the Institute of International Education, Stockholm University, and is writing a doctoral dissertation on the construction of the relationship between education and the economy in the educational policy discourse in Sweden. E-mail: florian.waldow@rz.hu-berlin.de Prospects, vol. XXXIV, no. 3, September 2004