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EDUCATION

Number of EU students on state support way up

The number of European citizens receiving the Danish student stipend known as SU has increased sevenfold since a EU court ruled in 2013 that foreign students have the right to benefit from the system.

Published: 27 March 2015 08:41 CET
Number of EU students on state support way up
Public broadcaster DR reported Thursday that the number of foreign students on the State Educational Grant and Loan Scheme (SU) jumped from 546 in January 2013 to 3,945 in January 2015. 
 
The massive increase is seen as a direct result of a July 2013 EU court decision that upheld the right of foreign students in Germany to receive German benefits. 
 
The ruling meant that EU citizens who come to Denmark with the primary intention to study and work a certain number of hours on the side have the right to receive the Danish student benefit. 
 
The benefit pays out a maximum of 5,903 kroner per month before tax. Students’ level of SU support depends on factors such as their parents’ income and whether or not they live at home. 
 
Danish politicians feared that the EU decision would lead to a boom in foreign students coming to Denmark to utilize the generous SU system and the new numbers from the Ministry of Higher Education confirmed those suspicions. 
 
According to the figures, students from Romania and Lithuania have been the biggest benefactors of the EU ruling. In 2014, 998 Romanians and 698 Lithuanians received student support from the state. 
 
In total, DR reported that 5,357 non-Danish students received SU at some point during 2014. 
 
Earlier this year, the Danish Agency for Higher Education found that 517 EU students received SU without qualifying for it. Of those, 389 were made to pay Denmark back for the benefit. 

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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.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
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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