Mid Sweden University

 This study aims to describe and understand the mission and enactment of public care in rural schools, to prevent students’ wellbeing and equality in education. The legal framework reinforces the school’s role in public care. According to Sweden’s new Social Services Act, all professionals working with children (including school staff) are legally required to report concerns to social services if they suspect that a child is being harmed or is at risk.  In rural areas, where external support may be sparse, school leaders play an important role in ensuring that this duty is understood and acted upon. But rural school leaders often lead across multiple sites, engaging in peripatetic leadership practices that challenge conventional expectations of presence and proximity. The physical absence from the school site, due to geographic dispersion, shapes how leadership is enacted and experienced. Rural school leaders and heads in Sweden face challenges in providing equitable education. Limited access to both educational and social support services, long travel distances, and constrained resources complicate efforts to fulfil the compensatory mission of education. Additional to the lack of support there is a phenomenon where individuals facing psychosocial challenges and dependent on income support are relocated to municipalities with lower housing costs.  In order to understand these complex leading practices practice theory is used. Rural school leaders develop situated leadership practices that are relational, contextually responsive, and ethically attuned. At the same time, rural schools often benefit from strong local engagement, high staff continuity, and close relationships, which contribute to a heightened sense of place and the development of social capital. These qualities can be strategically mobilized by educational leaders to foster structures of public care around students. In this study, we explore how school leaders in rural areas enact leadership that supports public care, based on school visits and interviews with teachers, social workers, and school leaders, as well as collective reflections from gatherings of school counsellors and school leaders. Preliminary findings indicate significant challenges: a lack of formal competence in both schools and social services, long distances that hinder collaboration, and limited institutional capacity. Despite these constraints, there is a strong commitment to children’s well-being among multi discipline welfare professionals, and the enactment and autonomy of civic care—locally driven, informal support structures developed within villages, schools and the social service. Instead of fragmented expert service and support there is a holistic general and informal support and care. This is a critical study that foregrounds the rural in relation to urban norms shaping policy frameworks. These norms are intended to be implemented in rural contexts that are frequently portrayed as deficient by urban standards yet possess alternative strengths that remain undervalued in an era dominated by metrics and formally accredited competencies.