There have been many attempts to reform the Swedish education system in order to reduce the size of the gaps between different upper secondary school programmes. These have included changes in teachers’ responsibilities and teacher education. Within an individual school, teachers of Swe dish language, English and mathematics may teach students of both vocational and further study preparation programmes. However, an analy sis of new teachers’ experiences and the organization of teacher teams at one school, Apel School, suggests that despite these reforms, some traditional preferences have persisted. Notably, teachers of the subjects listed above had clear hierarchical preferences regarding the school’s various teacher teams. Very few teachers were keen to join teams that were involved with a vocational programme. This arguably put both newer teachers and vocational programme students into particularly vulnerable situations because the new teachers were assigned to the less-preferred vocational programme teams but not provided with adequate support from more experienced teachers. Vocational students were more likely to have their teachers replaced as their old teachers advanced within the hierarchy. It is concluded that head teachers need to distribute new and experienced teachers in teacher teams more evenly even though experienced teachers express resistance.