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Compulsory schooling and the individual right to education– school absenteeism from a legal perspectiveThe dissertation examines the regulation of school attendance and the right to education on the basis of the Swedish Education Act (2010:800) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which since 2020 forms part of Swedish law through incorporation (the CRC Act). The central research question is how the right to education can be fulfilled when compulsory attendance is not complied with due to high levels of school absenteeism. The overarching and primary aims of the dissertation have been to examine, first, the content and significance of the regulation of compulsory schooling for the realisation of the children’s right to education in Sweden, and, second, how this regulation is interpreted and applied when pupils have high rates of absence. The methodological and theoretical framework reflects an ambition to analyse school absenteeism both in terms of the law as it formally stands and in terms of how law is created an enacted in practice. The perspective proceeds from the view that legal regulation in the area of school, education and children’s rights, can not be fully understood through traditional doctrinal analysis alone, by examine legalisation, preparatory works, case law and legal doctrine, but also through the ways in which norms are made concrete in a given context. The Swedish Schools Inspectorates decisions in cases concerning individual pupils with high rates of absence have therefore constituted a central body of material. The study identifies several important factors that contribute to making legal accountability more difficult and to weakening the legal protection of children’s right to education. One of these factors is the decentralisation and fragmentation of responsibility within the education system. Another factor is a narrow understanding of education and how it can be realised in accordance with the best interest of the child.