This thesis aims to examine how teachers in municipal and independent upper secondary schools experience their horizontal and vertical autonomy to see if there are any similarities or differences between them. Describing their autonomy is done by applying a perception of teachers as street-level bureaucrats to gain a deeper understanding of the concept. In connection to the autonomy discussions, the theoretical understanding is provided in terms of horizontal and vertical influence that might affect autonomy. Those factors are reduced to three specific areas labelled as grading, teaching content and layout of teaching to examine our main research question: How do teachers in municipal and independent schools experience their vertical and horizontal autonomy? In order to answer our main research question, the following questions are specified, (1) how do teachers experience vertical and horizontal autonomy in the fields of grading, teaching content and layout of teaching? (2) what similarities or differences, if any, in respect to vertical and horizontal autonomy exist between teachers in municipal and independent schools? An interpretivist view forms the basis for this study and a qualitative approach is used to conduct a small-n comparison in order to answer those questions through semi-structured interviews. The result show that there is a relatively consistent view of vertical influence, where both the municipal and independent schools receive a high level of vertical autonomy. What is significant, however, is that due to loosely composed governing documents, there is rather a desire to reduce the vertical autonomy. In the horizontal respect, teachers in independent schools are more vulnerable, where guardians and students try to break into the vertical control and thus break the chain of command.