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On the right to say no — and the schools we found outside the Swedish model.
I have always opposed compulsory schooling, not school itself. We are happy for our children to attend a school that meets their needs. But our yes must be allowed to become a no.
If a school stops working for them, we want to be able to change schools or return to home schooling. We should be able to act when our children need a change, without first having to persuade someone that our reasons are good enough.
That possibility changes what choosing a school means. Our trust is something the school needs to keep earning. We chose it because it adds something to our children’s lives, and we want to be able to choose differently if that changes.
That is the educational freedom that matters to us: being able to decide for ourselves, even after we have said yes.
After many years of home schooling, three of our four children now attend schools we have chosen in the Czech Republic. This is the story of how that happened, and why it does not contradict our decision to leave Sweden.
We had already tried to find a school
Before leaving Sweden, we contacted around twenty municipal and independently run schools and visited several of them. Our eldest child is gifted and learned to read in Swedish and English before the age of two. As he approached school age, we needed to find an environment that could meet him where he was.
What we were offered was mainly the following year’s textbook and possibly moving up a year. We could not see how that would be enough. He needed a more thorough adjustment of pace, content and challenge.
Had we found a solution that worked, we would not have needed to leave for that reason. But after all those conversations, it was clear to us that we needed to be able to arrange his education differently.
There was also a question of principle. For us, our children’s upbringing should begin with their needs and with the family. I do not believe the state should be able to force a child into schooling that the parents judge unsuitable while closing off other educational paths. My objection also concerns the ideological content of the compulsory curriculum. What Sweden calls its “fundamental values”, particularly the ambition to counter gender norms, includes positions I do not want the state imposing on our children. To me, that becomes political conditioning. Children must be allowed to be children, and families must be able to choose an education without also having to accept the state’s view of how they should think and live.
We left Sweden in 2015. Our two eldest children were then home schooled until they were around twelve.
It worked very well for them. They could follow their interests, move on when they were ready and spend time on whatever sparked their curiosity. I still value that freedom more highly than anything a school can fully offer.
When other families had school brought into their homes
During the corona-lockdown-era, daily life changed for the families around us. Schools in the Czech Republic closed for periods of time, and lessons moved into people’s homes.
For us, having already home schooled for several years, it was strange to see learning at the kitchen table suddenly become something so many families were expected to manage.
But remote schooling was very different from our way of living and learning. The tasks, timetables and demands still came from school, now through a computer. Families had not chosen the situation, and their room to shape learning around the child was different from the freedom we had enjoyed.
For me, voluntary choice is essential. Being ordered to follow school lessons at home is not the educational freedom we moved for.
While others were trying to make school work at home, our own family’s circumstances changed dramatically.
When we could no longer home school
Around the time of our youngest son’s very premature birth, we faced a serious family situation. Our circumstances made it impossible to continue home schooling as before. We needed to find another solution for the older children.
This was not what we had planned. Without what happened, our eldest would probably not have started school at that point. Perhaps it would have happened later, but the timing arose from necessity.
We found a private school with a fast pace and substantial challenges. It turned out to be an excellent fit for him.
The situation forced us to change our daily lives. Which school we chose, however, was our decision, based on what we thought would work for our son. We could look for an environment that suited him and assess what the school actually offered.
During a difficult time, having that choice mattered enormously.
A school with high expectations and room to grow
That school uses entrance exams and reasoning tests and has a distinctly achievement-oriented environment. Expectations are high, and the pupils want to work at a demanding pace.
But it is only one of many options in the Czech Republic. Here, the range extends from small groups of home-schooling families to exclusive private schools with uniforms. At fee-paying, selective schools, families pay school fees and the school decides which applicants to admit according to its admission criteria. There are also schools specifically focused on high intellectual ability, such as Mensa gymnázium in Prague, where an IQ score of at least 130 is one of the admission requirements. Different settings offer different paces, approaches and environments. That is precisely the diversity we value: the possibility of finding a place that suits the child.
One question we often hear is how home-schooled children can enter school without school reports or other records from a previous school. For our children, it was no problem at all. The entrance exams gave them a chance to show what they knew, and that was enough for them to be admitted.
Nor was the transition from our daily rhythm at home to being at school at eight in the morning a problem. After years of more flexible routines, they adapted well when school became part of their everyday lives.
Teaching is also organised by ability level in different subjects. In mathematics, for example, pupils can work at a level that better matches their knowledge. For our children, it has been important to be challenged without always having to wait for an entire year group to catch up.
We have not had to fight for our children’s needs to be taken seriously. Parent–teacher meetings have instead been full of praise for them, alongside clear feedback whenever something needs more practice. Extra support is available, but our children have not needed it. For our eldest son, it has instead been about further challenges: he has been selected to represent the school in mathematics and robotics competitions, both in the Czech Republic and abroad.
That was a considerable difference from our experience of looking for a solution in Sweden.
The school’s combination of fees and academic selection falls outside the ordinary Swedish compulsory-school model. There, schooling is free and entrance exams are generally prohibited. The specific exceptions did not match what we were looking for when our child was approaching primary-school age.
To me, being able to choose a school with a clear focus matters. Children need different environments. A school can be very good for some children without being right for everyone.
We also pay for the environment around our children
School fees pay for more than lessons. We also pay for the learning environment, the expectations and the community around our children.
The school belongs to a privileged world, far removed from my own upbringing. Perhaps that is why I value its safe and stable environment so highly.
Our experience is that many families are engaged in their children’s education and have high expectations. I want our children to be surrounded by peers who inspire them to learn, make an effort and grow. Being able to choose that environment is an important reason why we pay.
The fees limit who can attend. At the same time, our finances in the Czech Republic, with the lower tax burden we have here, give us room to prioritise our children’s education. We are happy to pay for something that works, and we expect the school to deliver quality, commitment and respect.
Then his younger brother wanted to join
Our second eldest son saw how things were going for his older brother and wanted to join him.
The school organised team-building activities, trips and competitions. There was plenty that appealed to him, and as he approached his teenage years, starting school became a natural next step.
For him, the wish came from what he saw in his brother’s experience. School had become a real possibility that he wanted to try for himself.
Music has become particularly important. He started playing the guitar during his years of home schooling and has continued developing at school. Today, he plays in a band. He has benefited enormously from the school’s music programme and its dedicated teachers.
I think that says something about how learning can continue across different environments. An interest that had time to grow at home could then develop further with teachers and other pupils.
We also appreciate the respect the teachers show both the children and us. Our children encounter expectations, but also commitment and opportunities to take responsibility.
Not everything is perfect. School involves compromises, and our everyday lives did not turn out exactly as we had imagined. But the transition has worked well for both of our older children. Their years of home schooling did not prevent them from starting school when we found the right one.
Our third son needed a different solution
We had also planned to continue home schooling our third son. At the same time, I wanted the Czech language to have a larger and more natural place in his life.
I found activities and groups, but he did not want to take part. What looked good in my plans did not suit him.
By chance, I discovered a tiny bilingual village school near where we lived, with the countryside right beside it. Its focus was on gifted children.
He now attends that school and is happy there.
It is a very different environment from his older brothers’ school. The groups are mixed-age, and much of the learning takes place outside the classroom, often in the school’s lush garden. For him, school also became a way to make Czech part of everyday life.
We did not need to choose the same solution for him as for his brothers. We could start with what he needed as an individual.
Practical freedom matters most
In conversations with people who run small alternative schools here, one theme keeps returning: their sense of having room to shape what they do.
The Czech Republic also has regulations, educational programmes and school inspections. But the practical freedom we have encountered has made it possible to find very different ways of organising our children’s daily lives. As several people who run schools have put it to me: “They want the children to learn; how we do it and what we teach is up to the school.” That is their description of the freedom they experience in practice. This diversity exists because there is room for it to exist.
For us, that freedom shows up in concrete ways: a fast-paced school with academic selection, a small bilingual village school, home-schooling groups and activities in nature.
Our youngest, who is four, is currently trying a small alternative pre-school and home-schooling club with its own animals, which the children help care for. There, he can play, learn and make friends. We still plan to home school him when he is older.
As with the other schools, I have jokingly said to the head: “Your school would be banned in Sweden — and that is exactly why we want our child here.” When I explained the Swedish restrictions, I was met with understanding. The head drew parallels with communism.
What matters so much to us is being able to continue along this path even when he reaches school age: combining home schooling with community and choosing what suits our child.
Educational freedom means being able to choose again
I still see home schooling as the best solution for many of our children’s growing-up years. When we could shape everyday life ourselves, there was room to adapt learning in ways that are difficult to recreate in a group.
But life changed, and we needed something different. The children also grew older and developed their own wishes about what to do next.
That is why freedom of choice matters so much to me. It needs to make room both for what we planned and for what we later discovered we needed.
We could not have followed the same path within the Swedish system: first home schooling for many years, then choosing these schools, while continuing to plan home schooling for our youngest child.
The fact that three of our children now attend school does not contradict our decision to leave. We found alternatives that worked when we needed them.
Our yes to these schools rests on their working for our children. If that changes, we need to be able to choose another path. To me, that possibility is the very foundation of educational freedom.
We did not leave Sweden to decide once and for all how our children would learn. We left so that we could keep choosing as life changed.