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EDUCATION

Left Party to focus on pre-school staff reform

The minority opposition Left Party wants to reduce pre-school class sizes and invest in staff, it said ahead of releasing its proposed budget for the next political term.

Left Party to focus on pre-school staff reform
A pre-school class in the 1980s. File photo: Private

The Left Party is likely to form some kind of cooperation with the Social Democrats and Greens if there's a shift in government after the September elections. A key focus for party would then be to cap the number of children in pre-school. This would ease the burden on the staff, it says. 

"It's obvious that they don't have enough time no matter how much they try," financial spokeswoman Ulla Andersson said about the working conditions in an interview with public broadcaster SVT.

At present, there are on average 20 children per teacher in Sweden's pre-schools. 

The party would also like children whose parents are on parental leave to have better access to pre-schools. Currently, a child with a parent at home, for example because the family has welcomed another child, can only attend classes for 15 hours a week. The Left Party would like to increase that to 30 hours.

The reform would also allow children whose parents are unemployed to spend more time in pre-school.

The pre-school investment would cost 7.1 billion ($1.08 billion), with 750 million ($114 million) earmarked for employing more staff. The Left Party, which presents its full budget next Tuesday, would pay for the reforms by revoking the centre-right government's reduction in restaurant VAT. 

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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