The last three decades have been characterized with tremendous changes and reformations in the Swedish school policy as a result from the global trend of reorganizing the public sector. These reformations consisted of shifting the responsibility of managing the organization and financial distribution from the government to the local municipalities. However, with that fact, the Swedish educational sector has been experiencing a teacher shortage especially in the public compulsory schools at the local level. Which leads to the purpose of this study how local authorities are promoting teachers and their role.

The aim of this thesis is to study and analyze how the local political governance is designed (through local policies/regulations, financial management and auditing) is affecting the role and autonomy of teachers in the public compulsory schools in relation to the new public management and professionalism as management models. This is a qualitative descriptive case study where the municipality of Trollhättan and its local regulatory tools will be analyzed, and where potential conflicts that may arise between the two management models will be theoretically explained.

Finally, as the analysis shows, there are features of the disagreement between the new public management and professionalism (control and autonomy) in the design of the local political governance of the school policy and its effect on the role of teachers. It is also remarkable that the way of governance of the school policy by local authorities plays an important role in promoting the role of teachers.