Moa Ishizaki

My degree project is about school segregation. My experience from this placement is that student composition differs significantly between schools and that the groups we encounter in the aesthetic programmes in the upper-secondary schools are homogeneous in terms of background and where in Stockholm they grew up. According to the Swedish National Agency for Education’s statistics from 2023, 14.7 percent of the students in the Aesthetics Programme have a foreign background and 72.0 percent have parents with post-secondary education. Compare this with the Health and Social Care Programme, where 46.9 percent have foreign backgrounds and 38.3 percent have parents with post-secondary education, and the Natural Sciences Programme, where 36.8 percent have foreign backgrounds and 79.7 percent have parents with post-secondary education. These figures indicate that school segregation cannot only be understood as a phenomenon that exists at different schools, but just as well as a phenomenon in different programmes.

In my project, I therefore investigate why students in so-called ‘vulnerable’ areas choose, or reject, the Aesthetics Programme.

As part of my degree project, I will be holding a symposium in visual arts education together with Felicia Faller, Lisa Sandström and Andrea Langendorf. With this symposium, we aim to advance conversations about and create forums for visual arts education, culture and policy. We want, through our works, to get the opportunity to engage in dialogue with both the department and society.