The importance of the local community for the development of the school system during the 19th century has been touched upon by several researchers. However, interest in the changes to the school system in Sweden during the 1950s and 1960s has largely focused on developments at the national level. The picture has mostly been that the state, the formulating arena, set the rules and the municipalities, the realization arena, implemented nationally decided welfare policy. Here the interest is different; by focusing on municipal conditions and local interests, the implementation of political reforms, specifically the nine-year compulsory school, can be nuanced.

By a case study comparing two municipalities in the county of Värmland, Storfors and Arvika, with different local conditions and traditions of education, this study aims to investigate and analyse the establishment of the nine-year compulsory school at the local level, thereby making local interests and the importance of local conditions visible for the establishment of the compulsory school.

The processes in the two municipalities were affected by the state formulation arena's decisions but, as previous research has shown, there was a high degree of variation in how the school system was shaped locally. The same applies to local decision-making. It too was influenced and shaped based on local conditions. From the analysis of the process in Storfors and Arvika, three main results can be discerned: 1) the establishment of the primary school at the local level was largely about initiating and completing processes sideways, within and between municipalities, not only vertical processes between state and municipality. 2) The local tradition, which can also be called the local culture or the social mechanisms, influenced the processes in the two municipalities, and 3) the process in the local realization arena was largely driven by what we would call civil servants.

År 1962 fattade den svenska riksdagen beslutet om införandet av nioårig enhetsskola, grundskolan. Det var ett beslut som föregåtts av utredningar, debatter och en försöksverksamhet och som förändrade det skolsystem som funnits i Sverige i omkring 100 år. Idén med enhetsskola var att demokratisera skolväsendet genom att alla skulle ha rätt till likvärdig utbildning och att skillnader mellan regioner, platser och elever skulle motverkas.

Det var kommunerna som hade ansvaret att genomföra statens beslut och att införa enhetsskola trots att tilltron brast till kommunerna att hantera genomförandet. Rimligheten av den misstron kan emellertid ifrågasättas.

Denna undersökning av etableringen av grundskolan åren 1950–1968 i två Värmländska kommuner, Arvika och Storfors med skiftande lokala förhållanden och förutsättningar, visar hur införandet av grundskolan påverkades av lokala intressen och lokala förhållanden. Ytterligare resultat är att processer i sidled, inom och mellan kommunerna, tillsammans med kommunernas traditioner samt enskilda aktörer var centrala för etableringen av grundskolan.