The Swedish school of today reflect the society we live in. We live in a multi cultural society and in our schools there are pupils with different backgrounds, cultures and mother tongue, which make it necessary for every teacher to treat every single pupil’s need and condition. The education in Sweden must be equivalent, according to Skollagen, 1 kap. 2§. But it has shown that the education for newly arrived pupils is organised differently in Sweden. Not until the fall 2008 it has existed guidelines for the municipalities and schools, how to organise the education. These guidelines are called Allmänna råd för utbildning av nyanlända elever.

The aim of this thesis was to examine how six different municipalities in the area of Stockholm organize education for newly arrived pupils with foreign extraction. Even if we knew from earlier reports that the education for newly arrived pupils is organised differently between the municipalities in Sweden, we still found it interesting to compare the situation in a restricted area as Stockholm. Another aim of this thesis was to examine how the different municipalities organise the education for these pupils in relation to Skolverkets Allmänna råd för utbildning av nyanlända elever and what attitudes the municipalities show towards these advises.

Through our analysis we have reached the conclusion that depending on which municipality the newly arrived pupil comes to the education is organised differently. Some pupils will start in preparation classes, others will be placed directly in an “ordinary” class. Consequently the education in the examined municipalities is not equivalent.