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‘Free’ schools suffer as enrollments drop

Amid a drop in the number of Swedish school students, many of Sweden’s publicly-financed, privately-run ”free” schools are taking a financial beating that some won't be able to survive.

Published: 5 September 2012 10:29 CEST

“It is a shrinking market and it is key to try to keep as many students as possible. Some schools won’t survive,” said Anders Hultin, CEO of JB Education, Sweden’s next to largest free school concern, to Swedish business daily Dagens Industri (DI).

According to a report by the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket), the number of high school students has fallen by 30,000 in three years and another 60,000 are predicted to disappear within the next two academic years.

Sweden’s free schools make up a quarter of the market and if the number of students keep falling as expected, free schools will lose some 16,000 students, which correlates to an the annual loss of around 1.6 billion kronor ($238 million).

And experts are saying that there is a clear trend showing that fewer students apply to the formerly very popular free schools today than in past years.

Signs of the changing fortunes for Sweden’s free schools began to emerge last spring, when fewer than half of Stockholm’s 120 free high schools had managed to fill half of the spots available, according to a May report by Sveriges Radio (SR).

Three of the Stockholm schools didn’t even have one student set to enroll for the autumn term.

In addition, no new free schools have started up in the last year and three existing schools were forced to close down, according to DI.

Despite schools have been aware of the decrease in students for some time, they are still struggling to adapt financially, due to long lease periods among other things.

Marcus Strömberg, the CEO of free school Academedia, believes that Sweden will see more schools go out of business over the next few years as the margins for free schools continue to shrink.

“Profit margins for free schools are at 6-8 percent. The margins have fallen by a few percent compared to two or three years ago,” Strömberg told DI.

TT/Rebecca Martin

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Explained: What Sweden's new curriculum will mean for your children

Sweden's Education Minister Anna Ekström announcing the new curriculum on Friday. Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT

What is Sweden's school curriculum?

In the Swedish school system, what is taught at primary and lower secondary school, grundskola, is governed by 'course plans', kursplaner, and 'teaching plans', läroplaner, while what is taught at upper secondary schools is governed by 'subject plans', ämnesplaner.

Why was there a need to change the curriculum?

The curriculum currently in place is little changed from that brought in under the previous centre-right Alliance government in 2011.

That curriculum has been criticised by teachers, students and their parents for having confusing and complicated criteria for grading and guides for teaching that can be hard to interpret.

“Imprecise and confusing curriculums and lessons plans make teachers' jobs more difficult and reduce the possibility of pupils to understand what they're supposed to learn,” Sweden's education minister Anna Ekström said at a press conference announcing the changes.

She also said that both parents and teachers had long complained that the previous curriculum demanded and unrealistic level of analysis from pupils of an early age.

“I know that there are many parents who have been astonished when they have seen what demands are made on the ability to analyse at low ages for children,” she said.

At the press conference, Ekström complained that the existing curriculum also failed to make clear enough differences between what knowledge was required in subjects at different levels, leading to repetition and a lack of clarity.

She said that the previous curriculum also led to what she called stoffsträngsel, or 'contents congestion' – that it included so many details and requirements that it was impossible for teachers to get through in the hours provided.

What you need to know about sending your children to school in Sweden

Photo: Jonas Ekströmer/TT

So what's been changed?

The new curriculum, announced in a press release on Friday, is more concise, with a greater emphasis on factual knowledge and understanding, and less emphasis on pupils' ability to research and analyse themselves.

Back in 2011, some educationalists felt that near-universal access to the internet had made factual knowledge less important than the ability to research and assess information.

Ekström said the new curriculum brought a renewed emphasis on factual knowledge and understanding.

“That knowledge is a good in and of itself is put forward much more clearly than it was the former curriculum,” she said at a press conference announcing the changes. “There is a clear focus from the government that it should be knowledge and understanding which is the focus of Swedish schools.”

She said that the new curriculum was also clearer and more concise.

“We have tried to concentrate the contents, take out the unnecessary examples — that’s something teachers can and do provide themselves,” she said.

The requirement for students to carry out their own analysis will increase with age, while the knowledge requirements have been made less detailed and extensive, making them easier for teachers to use.

In addition, the content will now differ more clearly between different year groups and courses.

Who is responsible for changing the curriculum?

The curriculum has been written by the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket), but the change in focus was demanded under the January agreement struck between the Social Democrat, Green, Centre and Liberal parties.

This stated that “course and teaching plans should be revised to strengthen the emphasis on knowledge and factual knowledge, and to encourage diligence and ambition”.

The decision to approve Skolverket's final proposal, which was submitted in December, was made by Sweden's two-party red-green coalition together with the Centre and Liberal parties.

How Sweden's upper secondary schools are adapting to coronavirus

Photo: Lars Pehrson/SvD/TT

What was the criticism last year about?

When Skolverket submitted its first proposal last autumn it was sharply criticised for the decision to leave out ancient history, the bible, the psalms and the national anthem.

There was also concern that the curriculum required pre-teens to do “advanced literary analysis”.

Both of these criticisms have been met in the final curriculum agreed between the four parties, with ancient history and the bible back in and the level of required literary criticism scaled back.

Requirements for grades clearer and less specific

The grading system itself will not be changed under the proposals, but Skolverket hopes that the grading process will become more fair and accurate. Swedish grades are awarded from A-F, with A the highest grade and A-E all counted as 'pass' grades.

These grades are awarded at the end of each school term (only in the subjects the student was taught in that term, and during högstadiet only at the end of a course), starting with the autumn term of Grade 6.

The agency plans to change so-called 'knowledge requirements' (kunskapskraven). These are the things which students are required to know in order to receive a certain grade, and Skolverket said the current system led to students getting very low grades just because certain details of the knowledge requirements weren't met.

For example, rather than requiring students to show how the “social, media, judicial, economic and political structures in society” are structured and how they function (as in the current syllabus for social studies), they will be required to show “knowledge of conditions and structures in society” and give examples of “connections within and between different social structures”.

So in the new proposals, knowledge requirements are “less extensive, contain fewer details and are formulated in a simpler way”, Skolverket said.

This is intended to ensure students receive grades that accurately reflect their understanding of a subject, and that teachers can focus less on having to teach specific details in order to reach a grade.

What happens now?

Skolverket will now look at the amount of hours assigned to each subject and analyse how this needs to be changed to allow teachers to teach the new curriculum, with history, in particular, likely to require more hours than given to it at present.

Rather than increase the total number of hours of tuition, hours are likely to be trimmed from other subjects to make way for topics like ancient history and the bible.

Skolverket has been asked to provide the new teaching timetable, with the hours assigned to each subject by March.

The new curriculum is then set to come into force at the start of next July, with pupils beginning to be taught under it the following August.

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