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Hartmann, Sweden

in Sweden. While further education in the beginning had only been seen as investment to promote the futurę collective and individual development in society, it was soon discovered that prolonged education also was an inei-pensive way to keep young people off the labour market.

As early as 1977. the local school boards were given the responsibility for labour market introduction and a follow up of the living conditions for those aged 16 and 17, and in 1980 the Swedish legislation transferred the total responsibility for young people under 18 from the Labour Adminis-tration to local school boards. (SCB 1987:2) The transfer of young people into the sole responsibility of the school, though the for mai school-leaving age remained at 16, discloses the official eiclusion of those under 18 from the open labour market. (Magnusson, 1981)

This step meant also an end to an era in Swedish labour market policy. From the !930s onwards, there had been the trust that the Labour Admin-istration was able to cope morę instantly and effectively with the problems on the labour market than any other institution in society. But the rising costs for youth relief work programmes and expensive work introduction schemes forced the government to iook for other Solutions. This became even morę urgent as morę and morę young people had found out that it was quite profitable in financial terms to leave school at 16 and immedi-ately receive a guaranteed income (in 1975 about SEK 2500/monthly) from a relief-programme whereas the study-grant for continued secondary education was SEK 250/weekly in the same year. (Hartmann, 1977)

Table 4.1 about here

Table 4.1 shows a great variety in the kind of intervention measures, but also in the levels of remuneration paid to the individual participating young person and to the organizations accepting young people. The differences in payments become understandable if one bears in mind that the majority of young people covered by the programmes are those unwilling to voluntar-ily continue secondary education.

Even though the Swedish government in its 1980 'Youth Bill" had envis-aged a 100% participation of all 16-17 year-olds in regular secondary education. in 1984 about 9% of all youth under 18 participated in some kind of eiternal youth follow-up programme, administered by municipal school-authorities. As many youngsters are reluctant to stay in any type of prolonged schooling, special youth centres are created, where vocational training assistants, welfare officers and psychologists develop individual