Over the 1990s and 2000s, children, young people and families have been the focus of much policy and media attention across many European countries (Lewis ed. 2006). Concerns have been raised that reflect the contradictory positioning of children and young people as both a vulnerable group and a social threat in social policy debates. On the one hand there has been major concern about the need to reduce inequalities between children, to reduce child poverty and to recognise, as well as support, children’s rights and capabilities as citizens (For comparative policy overviews of these developments please see UNICEF 2007; Lansdown 2006). However, on the other hand, rising concern about youth crime and anti-social behaviour positions children as the problem and as a threat to social cohesion. The responsibilities of children and their parents towards society are in this context emphasized. (Stoltz 2007). This paper critically examines the framing of these debates in recent years in England and Sweden, particularly focusing on their significance to policy agendas within education. Across both of these national contexts, education reform has recently been high up on government agendas. This observation could be seen against the background of a broader logic in which an emphasis on education and the future of children are seen as central to the restructuring of these two welfare states. The logics behind the British and Swedish welfare states have historically been described as belonging to different regimes: respectively a liberal (UK) and a social-democratic regime (Sweden) (Esping-Andersen 1990). Current debates on education seem to increasingly resemble each other, raising the question what similarities and differences can be recognised in the problem framing in education policies. Given the above described tension in the positioning of children in these policies we are notably interested in how children are perceived as present individuals with rights and responsibilities – or as so called ‘citizen-beings’ - and as citizens of the future - or so called ‘citizen-becomings’.