education Archives • SwedeInternational

law interpretation erases school information

Skolverket takes away school choice information — school choice blindfolded by law interpretation
pic: melbournechildpsychology.com

Swedish schools have come under a lot of critique over the last twenty years when school results have been lower, sometimes much lower, than was hoped. One of the tools parents and authorities have used to judge the performance of a school has been to check the statistics for each school. In a decision that came out today, the Swedish National Agency for Education must now make those statistics unavailable.

The statistics that have been available include how many students the school had, what percentage of the school’s teachers were certified and what percentage of the school’s students qualified for further studies. Apparently, there was a judgement earlier that came to the conclusion that these numbers were business secrets. This was not only because each student brings with them a certain amount of money, but also because school results are something the independent schools use to attract students. These statistics gave clues to the school’s economic stability. Therefore, the reasoning went, this was privileged information. Although this was originally only meant in regards to Swedish independent schools (friskolor), education agency head of analysis Eva Durhan announced that schools needed to have a level playing field and that it wouldn’t be fair that only public schools’ information would be available for scrutiny.

The upshot is that schools won’t be able to be compared in the school guide, making an educated choice of what school to attend more of a guessing game. Even the School Inspection Board won’t have any statistics to work with.

No one is particularly happy with this, reports SvD, and the national education agency is trying to find a workaround in order to supply both parents and students – but also government agencies – with this information. “Of course, we need to keep track of how things are going for our different schools” said Minister for Education Anna Ekström for DN: “We also need to know which children go to which schools so that they can pay the right resources to the schools. It is important that authorities can fulfill their tasks and that researchers and the general public have access to the information.”

“We understand that the National Agency for Education has to do what it has to do. But everyone agrees that another way has to be found. It is neither in our interests, nor in the interests of the independent schools, that parents can’t compare education institutions, says Per-Arne Andersson at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR).

Unfortunately, even with the best of intentions this will take a while. The government has asked both Statistics Sweden (SCB), and the National Agency for Education (Skolverket,) to find ways to resolve the situation. But, as Moderate party education spokesperson Kristina Axén Ohlin writes, the parliamentary education commission (utbildningsutskottet) wasn’t told anything. “We could have pushed through an initiative and forced a change in the law” she said. “The education agency will have a proposal in September but after that it will take at least six months. No state allowance or grade results will be seen during 2021.”

One possibility is that schools can voluntarily publish this information. Barring that, school information will be hard to come by.

PISA-test results (and Sweden’s international standing) questioned

Where is Sweden, really?
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.

09 Jan. – religious schools targeted by the government

no more religious schools?
pic: sydsvenska.se

One of the 73 points of the January agreement, pushed through largely by the Liberal party, strangely, was that the government would work towards prohibiting the establishment of any new primary or secondary school with a religious focus (konfessionell inriktning). A formal investigation into the matter was to be the first step (see point 57 here). Yesterday, the report from the investigation was handed to the Minister for Education, Anna Ekström, for consideration.

There are 72 schools in Sweden that have a religious focus, SvD reports. The vast majority of them are Christian, about ten or so have an Islamic orientation, and there is one school with a focus on judaism. According to Skolvärlden, however, these numbers are very inexact: It is up to the school to report if they have a religious focus or not, and neither Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) or the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (Skolinspektionen) have any definite numbers.

Despite the Social Democratic party being decidedly against the establishment any additional religious schools, there can be problems implementing a ban with both the European Convention, in which parents have the right to choose an education for their child in accordance with their religious convictions, as well as with the freedom to conduct business guaranteed by the Swedish “Basic Laws” or constitution (grundlagen). The report was of the opinion that a prohibition would survive a legal examination, but even the Minister for Education said it would be “legally tricky” (juridiskt trixigt).

Attention to religious schools has been particularly intense in conjunction with the closing of Vetenskapsskolan in Göteborg, due largely to IS adherents returning to the school from fighting abroad, and with Nya Kastets school in Gävle whose leadership has been connected with persons the Swedish Security Service consider a terror risk and where the worry was that children ran the risk of being radicalised and recruited.

Neither of these schools had registered as religious schools, which is a blind spot that one of the suggestions from the report is meant to address, DN reports.

In principle, religious schools are to be run, and to have the curriculum, exactly like regular municipal schools during school hours. This includes not segregating boys and girls in physical education class or having segregated seating on the school bus. After and before school, however, it is allowed to have religious elements such as prayer and religious study activities on school grounds.

Many people wonder, including the editorial board at DN, if the government is spending a little too much ammunition shooting at easy targets when the real problems are elsewhere. Only about 1% of Swedish school children attend religious schools, while 16% of Swedish school children don’t qualify for secondary school (gymnasium) education. The report itself states that religious schools work very well as a rule, and that they also work well in comparable countries. Penny wise and pound foolish, one might say. Or in Swedish terms, the government could be said to be filtering gnats but swallowing camels (silar mygg men sväljer kameler).

But symbolic politics – signalpolitik – is always a popular handhold when other things aren’t going so well. SVT’s Novus poll results show that only 8% of LO members (the Swedish Trade Union Confederation), the traditional backbone of the Social Democratic party, think that the government’s policies are good, while 57% think they’re bad: The results are a camel that the Social Democrats should be careful not to swallow.

18 Dec. – a new school plan

After the hullabaloo about scrapping Ancient History (those Romans and Greeks you learned about in school) from the Swedish school plan (läroplanen), the final version of the new school plan was presented to the government today. Although there are hopes it will be implemented as early as the beginning of the next school year, a more likely scenario is 2021.

Ancient history is back as required teaching in the middle school years, rest assured (see this post). Even the national anthem shall be mentioned, as well as the bible, and even a few common psalms. As a whole, there is to be a bigger focus on relaying facts in the early school years, leaving analysis and critical analysis to the later school years.

The major focus, however, is making the school plan, and grading, more transparent. The Swedish National Agency for Education, Skolverket, wants both students and their parents to better understand what is required for a certain grade. However, Skolverket emphasizes, the actual knowledge requirements for a grade have not been reduced in any way (SvD.se/läroplan).

How to squeeze in all the knowledge that needs to be taught in the current number of school hours is still the million dollar question. DN reports that the Swedish Association of Independent Schools (Friskolornas riksförbund) would like to see a change in the number of hours that is spent on each subject ( changes in the timplan), while the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (Svensk Näringsliv) is reported to think that increasing the number of hours spent in school might be a reasonable solution.

Where the money to increase the hours of school would come from could perhaps be called the ten million dollar question. Minister for Education Anna Ekström has ducked just that question by DN, saying it was a question “for another context.”

The next step is that Skolverket‘s plan is approved, or not, by the government and its supporting Center and Liberal parties.

The current number of hours each subject has during elementary school years (1-9):

Swedish/Swedish as a second language: 1490
Mathematics: 1230
Social studies (samhällsorienterande ämnena – SO which includes geography, history, religion, civics): 885 hours
Science (naturorienterade ämnen – NO): 600
Physical Education (idrott): 600
English: 480
Shop (slöjd): 330
Music: 230
Art (bild): 230
Home economics (hem- och konsumentkunskap): 118
Students’ choice: 177

See skolverket.se.

4 Oct. – Ancient history’s back, but no one’s saying sorry

After widespread and ferocious critique, the Swedish National Agency for Education backed off on its proposal to scrap teaching ancient history. They’re not saying “sorry, our mistake, we take it back” though. They’re saying, instead, that “the support for the proposal wasn’t there” and that “the time problem remains.”

Although the debate was officially welcomed, Anna Westerholm from the National Agency thought it was a bit blown out of proportion. Some of the critics, she said, had an unrealistic picture of what students learn during the 11 or so hours in 7th grade when history is discussed. “It’s been like, this is how students learn about ancient history’s contribution to justice, drama, civilization and architecture – Which is quite an unrealistic expectation” Furthermore, she said, “elementary school is not the only time students study ancient history – it comes back in high school” (Svd.se).

As Maria Schottenius at DN points out, both shop (craft and woodwork), and art, get each 180 and 80 hours of instruction while history gets 70 hours. Perhaps there is something there we can have a debate about.

Since both math and physical education were given more hours of instruction fairly recently, the idea is now to increase the hours of history instruction. “History is a subject that only gets bigger with time” said Westerholm. ”More history means more hours, but that’s up to the government.”

The minister for Education is Anna Ekström, if you want to get in touch.

Fri. 16/8 – an easier A?

The Swedish National Agency for Education (skolverket) announced today that they are looking to reformulate the current descriptions for what knowledge is required for each school subject grade. The Agency’s general director, Peter Fredriksson, made clear that the actual knowledge requirements (kunskapskrav) were not going to change, but that the wording was going to be reworked to make it easier for students, teachers and parents to understand. Another part of the reform aims to focus more on students’ factual knowledge, letting the current emphasis on analysis wait for later studies ().

In what would be truly light speed in parliamentary proceedings, the National Agency hopes to be able to roll out the changes by this time next year. The reason is not just that the current grading system has racked up complaints from all corners, but that the government is already in agreement with its coalition party the Greens, and its two cooperating parties, the Liberal and Center parties. The Liberal party has been gunning for taking on the school portfolio for a long time, though their hand in the previous curriculum was deemed to be fairly disastrous and an impetus to the fresh changes needed now. Schools were a priority for the previous Liberal Party leader Jan Björklund, but Sabuni’s view on the matter is unclear.

At any rate, no one thinks this is going to turn school results around, but it might make the grading system easier to understand, making happier students and voters.