The overall goal is a school system where all children have equal rights to a good education and knowledge in a secure environment.

[2] The agency has the opportunity to decide on complaints, orders or injunctions with a penalty to get school boards to implement necessary measures.

As a last resort, the authority may withdraw the authorization for independent schools, adopt measures on the municipal local principal's expense, or to close a school.

Several other missions, such as auditing of grants for schools and reviews of test results, is also conducted by the agency.

The agency was formed on 1 October 2008[3] on the initiative of Minister for Education Jan Björklund but is a separate agency from the Ministry of Education.