pic: lararen.se
The PISA test is an international test (about 80 countries take part) that tests the knowledge and skills in science, reading comprehension and math of a huge sample of 15 year-old students. Basically, it’s a test of what every 15 year old should know at that point in their school career. It’s given every three years.
From always believing Sweden was on top, Sweden’s actual PISA-test results have has gone down almost every single year since the beginning of 2000, to the extreme dismay of government after government. But last year, in 2018, Sweden appeared to have turned a corner, with scores landing a bit above the OECD average. Everyone was jubilant. Everybody took credit. Yesterday, however, the dream was punctured: Expressen published an article saying the gain was fake.
The fact is that every country is allowed to exclude 5% of their tests from being part of the final result if the test-takers are unable to be fairly judged on their knowledge due to their poor language ability. This generally means that the test results of students who are new to a country are excluded. For this last test, Sweden (the Swedish National Agency for Education, Skolverket) apparently asked, and was given the go-ahead, to exclude 11% of its results from the final tally, more than any other country. Since 11% of Sweden’s 15 years old surpasses the actual number of new 15 year-old immigrants to Sweden, this meant that more than just new arrivals to Sweden were excluded. Basically the low score of any student, even those born and raised in Sweden, could potentially have been excluded. Sweden’s better than average results could be because of the unusually large numbers of students that were excluded.
The director of the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) says that he is confident everything was done by the book, but Minister for Education Anna Ekström has now asked the OECD to recheck Sweden’s PISA numbers. Both the Liberal and the Moderate parties have asked Ekström to meet with them to explain what’s going on. “It is worrisome that so many students leave grade school without passing grades” said the Moderate party’s education spokesperson Kristina Axén Olin. “We need to discuss what to do, and it is therefore a disservice if we hide the real results.”
A significant part of Sweden’s self esteem is based on their being above average on every single international comparison, and the PISA-test results over the last nearly 20 years has been a shadow on an otherwise pretty sunny self-image. It is therefore important that each and every one of these shadows is shown to be false – if they are false. Stay tuned for what the OECD has to say about Sweden’s results.