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SCHOOLS

Sweden unveils new school curriculum

Sweden's education minister Jan Björklund on Monday presented a new school curriculum promising clearer goals for teachers and pupils, with the introduction of grades from year six.

Published: 11 October 2010 12:07 CEST
Sweden unveils new school curriculum

“The requirements of the school should be clear and concrete. Teachers, parents and students should understand what is expected in class. The curriculum states that students are entitled to structured, teacher-led instruction,” Jan Björklund said in an education ministry statement.

The minister argued that “it is time to upgrade the teacher and teaching in schools.”

The new national curriculum will apply to the nine years of compulsory school, as well as the Sami school and special schools, and will replace the previous framework introduced in 1994.

The 1994 curriculum, which was also implemented by a centre-right government, left too much scope for choice and decentralisation, Björklund said on Monday, promising to increase central control over the education system.

The new curriculum will reduce the number of specified goals, provide greater clarity in those goals, and proscribe centralized teaching content.

The National Agency of Education (Skolverket) will in the autumn be charged with developing knowledge requirements for years three, six and nine.

In year nine knowledge requirements will be developed for all subjects, while at year six modern languages will be exempted. In year three (9/10 years-old) knowledge requirements will be introduced for Swedish, Swedish as a second language, maths and natural and social science subjects.

Grades on a new A-E,F scale will be introduced in year nine, and for year six subject to parliamentary approval.

Work to implement the new curriculum will be undertaken by the education agency during the 2010/11 academic year with autumn 2011 earmarked for the gradual introduction of the new curriculum and course outlines.

The Local reported on Sunday that the government has announced one significant change from proposals framed by the education agency – regarding the teaching of Christianity in schools.

In a move described as “the government steamrollering the agency”, Björklund has decided that Christianity should continue to receive special treatment when teaching religion in schools.

“It’s not that the Christian religion is better than any other, rather it has to do with the enormous influence Christianity has had on our country, and still does have in our part of the world,” Björklund explained.

The agency had proposed that the world’s five main religions, which are all taught in religious education classes Swedish schools, should be given equal emphasis.

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DISCRIMINATION

Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

Parents with Arabic-sounding names get a less friendly response and less help when choosing schools in Sweden, according to a new study from the University of Uppsala.

Published: 6 April 2022 12:05 CEST
Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

In one of the largest discrimination experiments ever carried out in the country, 3,430 primary schools were contacted via email by a false parent who wanted to know more about the school. The parent left information about their name and profession.

In the email, the false parent stated that they were interested in placing their child at the school, and questions were asked about the school’s profile, queue length, and how the application process worked. The parent was either low-educated (nursing assistant) or highly educated (dentist). Some parents gave Swedish names and others gave “Arabic-sounding” names.

The report’s author, Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh said that the study had demonstrated “relatively large and statistically significant negative effects” for the fictional Arabic parents. 

“Our results show that responses to emails signed with Arabic names from school principals are less friendly, are less likely to indicate that there are open slots, and are less likely to contain positive information about the school,” he told The Local. 

READ ALSO: Men with foreign names face job discrimination in Sweden: study

The email responses received by the fictional Arabic parents were rated five percent less friendly than those received by the fictional Swedish parents, schools were 3.2 percentage points less likely to tell Arabic parents that there were open slots at the school, and were 3.9 percentage points less likely to include positive information about the municipality or the school. 

There was no statistically significant difference in the response rate and number of questions answered by schools to Swedish or Arabic-sounding parents. 

Taghizadeh said that there was more discrimination against those with a low social-economic status job than against those with an Arabic name, with the worst affected group being those who combined the two. 

“For socioeconomic discrimination, the results are similar, however, here the discrimination effects are somewhat larger,” he told The Local. 

Having a high economic status profession tended to cancel out the negative effects of having an Arabic name. 

“The discrimination effects are substantially important, as they could potentially indirectly influence parents’ school choice decision,” Taghizadeh said.

“Investigating socioeconomic discrimination is also important in itself, as discrimination is seldom studied and as explicit discrimination legislation that bans class-based discrimination is rare in Western countries including Sweden, in contrast to laws against ethnic discrimination.” 

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