This paper is named “The status of the programme is low” – Gymnasium teacher’s thoughts and attitudes towards students in the vocational- and the educational programmes. The purpose is, as the title reveals, to examine the attitude of four teachers in the Swedish gymnasium towards the vocational and the educational programmes and the students that attend either one of them. This purpose is accompanied by research which says that the educational programmes’ status is higher than one of the vocational programmes. The main questions asked are which differences that exist between the teacher’s descriptions of the vocational programmes in comparison to the educational programmes, as well as in which ways the teachers are upholding possible attitudes towards the various students.

The method that this paper is made with is a qualitative analysis of the interviews with the four different teachers from four different programmes in one gymnasium. The transcription of the interviews is the subject of analysis. As theory, both the theories of Edward W. Said and Michel Foucault are used in this study. Said´s book Orientalism focuses on the difference between the “we” and “the other”. Foucault talks in his theory of the discourse and of power, about how the persons and/or things with the power in a certain discourse are the ones that also have access to define that which is considered as knowledge.

The conclusion is, among other things, that the teacher’s attitudes towards the students in the different programmes correlate with the existing discourse in Swedish schools which says that the educational programme’s status is higher than that of the vocational programmes. The teacher’s enthusiasm to express that there is a hierarchy between the different programmes also corresponds to previously done research about students. This research says that students in low status programmes are more willing to talk about and acknowledge the hierarchy, while the students in high status programs, tend to undermine or deny that the hierarchy even exists.