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Grundtvig, regarded as the founder of the folk high school, received inspiration for the concept from the English boarding schools, but Grundtvig's focus was not on formal education but on popular education and enlightenment.

give the peasantry and other people from the lower echelons of society a higher educational level through personal development; what Grundtvig called "the living word"

The folk high school movement was an act against a conservative ideal of both education and culture. An act against an ideal of literacy and book-learning, a use of language unknown to common people and a learning ideal where the primary relation was between the individual and the book alone.

Grundtvig fought for a public education as an alternative to the university elite

The folk high schools should be for those wanting to learn in general and to help people form part of human relations and society

One of the main concepts still to be found at the folk high schools today is "lifelong learning". The schools should educate for life. They should shed light on basic questions surrounding life of people both as individuals and as members of society.

To Grundtvig the ideal was to give the students a sense of a common best and focusing on life as it really is

Grundtvig never set down guidelines for the future schools or a detailed description of how they should be run. He declared that the folk high schools should be arranged and developed according to life as it is and the schools should not hold exams because the education and enlightenment was a sufficient reward.

The first folk high school was founded in Rødding, Denmark, in 1844. It began on the initiative of Christen Kold, who was a follower of Grundtvig

The school was inspired by the need to educate those not fortunate enough to have an education and the poor, or peasantry, who could not spare the time or the money to attend a university

The first folk high schools in Sweden were established in 1868. As of 2008, there are about 150 folk high schools throughout the country, most of which are situated in the countryside, often in remote areas

Tuition is free, and the students are eligible for normal financial aid for expenses such as accommodation and other school costs. After graduating, the students are eligible to study at a university.

In just 14 years the share of Swedish children educated privately has risen from a fraction of a percent to more than 10%

What no one predicted was the emergence of chains of schools. Yet that is where much of the growth in independent education has come from

Kunskapsskolan gets its customers to do much of the work themselves

He then broadens the analogy to hotels and airlines, which make money only if they are popular enough to maintain high occupancy rates.

Youngsters spend 15 minutes each week with a tutor, reviewing the past week's progress and agreeing on goals and a timetable for the next one. This will include classes and lectures, but also a great deal of independent or small-group study

Kunskapsporten allows each student to work at his own level, and spend less or more time on each subject, depending on his strengths and weakness

Each subject is divided into 35 steps. Students who reach step 25 graduate with a pass; those who make it to step 30 or 35 gain, respectively, a merit or distinction

no money is wasted on fancy surroundings

Teachers update and add new material to the website during school holidays and get just seven weeks off each year, roughly the same as the average Swedish office worker

“We do not mind being compared to McDonald's,” he says. “If we're religious about anything, it's standardisation. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well.

Sweden's Independent Schools Association has ten members that run more than six schools, and five that run ten or more

Each child's progress is reported each week in a logbook, and parents can follow what is being studied on the website.

expectation that the children take responsibility for their own progress

“Our aim is that by the time students finish school, they can set their own learning goals,” says Christian Wetell, head teacher at Kunskapsskolan Enskede. “Three or four students in each year may not manage this, but most will.”

tracks the performance of individual teachers to see which ones do best as personal tutors or as subject teachers

bonuses to particularly successful teachers and is considering paying extra to good ones from successful schools who are willing to move to underperforming ones

preferred bidder to run two “academies”—state-funded schools run largely free from state control—in London

run by a not-for-profit arm, since for-profit ventures are banned from Britain's academies programme

The firm also hopes to open low-cost independent schools in Britain, where it can offer the full Kunskapsskolan experience, free of state meddling

the returns are solid, rather than stellar: Mr Ledin quotes an average return on capital of 5-7% a year

If a future government, hostile to school choice, changed the rules, that would be the end of this nascent market.

The school reforms are popular with parents, he says, and politicians know they meddle with them at their peril. More plausible would be a change to the rules so that independent schools had to match the methods and curriculum of state schools more closely, or perhaps even a ban on profits

The latter sounds bad, says Mr Stawström, but would not really amount to much: companies could split themselves into non-profit schools and a profit-making body that supplies services, such as teaching materials and consultancy