Tag: School

Teacher absolved by Swedish supreme court

school hallway
The teacher did not violate the student when he was removed from the hallway
pic: twenty20

It took three years to sort it, but the final verdict was “Not guilty.” When teacher Sören Claesson saw that a student was blocking the passage of students in a hall of the school, and refused to move, Sören put a wrestler’s grip on the student and moved him. For this, Claesson was accused of violating the student’s personal integrity, and the school was sued.

The case boiled down to whether or not the teacher was allowed to physically move the student. The plaintiff was Child and School Student representative, or BEO (Barn- och elevombudet). BEO had previously lost two earlier processes in the lower courts, but they chose to push it all the way to the Swedish supreme court. The reason, they said, was because although it had been previously ruled that teachers could in some cases use physical force to intervene in some situations, it had not been tried in the case of a student that had psychoneurological difficulties. Due to other aspects of personal integrity, only some teachers knew of the student’s diagnosis, and Claesson had not been informed.

SvD reported that, according the Teacher’s Union (Lärarförbundet), six of ten teachers are hesitant to get involved in a physical situation because they aren’t sure what rights they have. At the same time, teachers have a duty of supervision (tillsynsplikt) which doesn’t allow them to walk away from a situation. “It is good that we have now gotten a precedent-setting ruling (prejudicerande dom) and I hope that it means that teachers can feel more empowered” remarked the Union’s vice-chair Maria Rönn.

“Hopefully,” said Claesson, “this will lead to more teachers daring to get involved instead of putting on blinders.” 

For more posts on schools, see
law interpretation erases school information
09 Jan. – religious schools targeted by the government
18 Dec. – a new school plan
27 sep. – no school news is good news
Mon. 19/8 – GDPR takes down school photos

16 Oct. – municipalities still mostly broke

Sweden’s municipalities
pic: https://www.dn.se/nyheter/politik/fyra-av-fem-kommuner-tvingas-skara-ner/

Things are not looking good on the municipality front. The results from Dagens Nyheter’s municipality survey is just in – 4 out of 5 municipalities will be cutting some services in the coming year (DN.se/municipalities). Meanwhile, one would be hard-pressed to find a political party that didn’t swear on every bible in 20 counties that they weren’t supportive of the local communities every waking moment. Something isn’t adding up.

When talking about cutting services, it generally means elder services, social services and schools. To that end, or rather to try and prevent that end, the government and their supporting Center and Liberal parties have promised 5 billion kronor during the rest of their term in office. (Just for fun, you can compare the 5 billion kronor they are promising with the 90 billion kronor Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson says is needed by 2026.)

According to Helsingborg municipality, “the working population is just not paying enough taxes to cover the costs of taking care of both the young and the old – and the government isn’t helping bridge the gap.” So far, Helsingborg says, they’re not going to raise the municipal tax – but every tenth municipality, of the 197 municipalities that answered, says that they are. (There are a total of 270 municipalities in Sweden.)

According to questionnaire results, the top reasons for the deficit are:

  1. costs are rising faster than income
  2. demographic changes
  3. high costs
  4. less income

The most common expense they were planning on reducing was:

  1. everything (all verksamhet)
  2. unspecified (ospecifierad)
  3. care and services (vård och omsorg)
  4. schools

The overwhelming majority wrote in “everything” to DN’s question, which one can’t help but read in as a certain degree of hopelessness. Some municipalities have been running a deficit for many years, despite good times in other parts of the country. DN notes that saving on schools is particularly troublesome because school is not just a right but an obligation – if your kid isn’t attending school you’re actually breaking the law. Not providing for schools is therefore, in a sense, breaking contract (DN.se/contract). On the other hand, it’s hard to find a tax that doesn’t imply that the government is obliged to deliver something in return, be that hospitals, roads, defense, infrastructure, etc. It’s why we pay taxes.

While the government pays homage to the municipalities – without actually paying – the countdown to the presentation of the budget – this November – is already ticking. Perhaps this latest survey will be a kick in some direction, either a declaration of massive funding – or a declaration of “No, sorry, we can’t keep this up”. More likely, however, there will be many words of little substance. This survey, while fresh, is still, sadly, old news.

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.

27 sep. – no school news is good news

pic: workwide.se

The Swedish public school is in the news today. Then again, when is the Swedish public school not in the news?

Today’s news on the school front is threefold: school news from the Center party congress; school news on the curriculum front; and a computer malfunction that is currently causing hundreds upon hundreds of school computers to crash.

A blog at this same location yesterday, on the ongoing Center party congress, promised updates – so here’s an update. A motion to allow uncertified teachers to give school students a formal grade at the completion of a course lost. Not by much. The vote for allowing this was lost only because the congress was split on the issue and they tossed a coin to decide.

The Center party leadership was for allowing uncertified teachers to give out grades because, they argued, there aren’t enough certified teachers around. And the work uncertified teachers do should be shown official appreciation. Plus, they would only be allowed to do it if the school principal was ok with it.

On the other hand, people who were against the motion argued that it would depreciate the quality of school education even more, it would be insulting to teachers who actually put in all the work to get a degree, and would even jeopardize the trustworthiness of a grade given in this manner.

When the motion went to vote, the results were an even 245 for, and 245 against – hence the need for a coin toss. For the DN article, click here.

In a second bit of news, although this did come out a couple days ago, there’s a suggestion from Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) to stop educating kids on ancient Rome and Greece because there just isn’t time in the school year. In the Swedish school, they argue, history begins after year 1700.

In Sweden’s defense, there is a huge uproar about this, and it isn’t likely to get pushed through. This time.

Finally, school computers across the country are dying, DN reports. It started last Wednesday, when the first reports of laptop death were circulated. Since then, 750 computers have reportedly been hit, and more are expected.

The problem is a faulty drive routine that causes computer failure when restarted. The company behind the drive, Fujitsu, is working the weekend (we assume) to fix the problem. New USB drives are being distributed, but there’s no fixed date for the problem’s eradication.

There just isn’t a lot of good school news out there. Sorry.