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EDUCATION

Sweden recovers in global school rankings

Sweden's schools have showed signs of recovery in the latest edition of the global Pisa education ranking, with results in mathematics, reading and science now at or above the OECD average for all three subjects.

Sweden recovers in global school rankings
The Pisa results provide encouraging signs for Sweden. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

READ ALSO: What Pisa rankings actually say about Swedish schools

The 2013 edition of the survey was a wake-up call for Sweden, which experienced the sharpest drop in results of any of the 32 countries studied over a ten-year span, pushing them below the OECD average.

But Tuesday’s release of the latest instalment of the ranking, covering the year 2015, brought encouraging news for the Nordic nation, as all three subjects showed marked improvements.

Pisa called Sweden’s ability to reduce its share of low performers in mathematics while at the same time raising excellence and increasing its number of top performers “particularly encouraging”.

It also highlighted that Sweden shows one of the highest levels of efficiency in education, producing strong results compared to the number of hours students spend being instructed or doing homework. Only five other school systems in the study had a better ratio of learning time to academic outcome.

“The Pisa result is a show of strength from Sweden’s teachers and students. Hard work has made the difference, that’s known in the classroom, and it has been proven now in the improving competence of those in the ninth grade, and better results across two different knowledge measurements,” Sweden's education minister Gustav Fridolin said in a statement.

 

The head of Sweden's National Agency for Education (Skolverket) also celebrated the news, with Mikael Halápi labelling the result a “shot in the arm” for the country's teachers, students and principles.

There were however still challenges for the Swedish school system which emerged from the study. The gap between the highest and lowest performing students has increased over the last decade and is now wider than the OECD average. The performance gap between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged students has also increased meanwhile.

In addition, the performance gap between immigrant and non-immigrant students in science in Sweden is larger than the average across the OECD countries.

“Gaps are growing. Your upbringing now affects your results more in Sweden than in many other OECD countries. We will never accept that. It is what you do in school that will determine your future, not what home you grow up in. The Pisa result is a happy one, but it calls for policy. We will continue to prioritize more time for teachers, to cut out segregation and give students support in time. No one should be left behind,” Fridolin added.

READ ALSO: The Local interviews Sweden's education minister Gustav Fridolin

The study also suggests that Swedish public schools are more likely to produce better results than private alternatives in the country.

Though the share of 15-year-old students enrolled in Sweden's private schools more than doubled between 2006 and 2015, students in public schools showed better results than those in private schools after accounting for the socio-economic profile of the students and schools, Pisa noted.

Education agency head Halápi said the new Pisa results require detailed analysis, and tempered some of the celebrations with a reminder that Sweden is still short of its high-point in the rankings from 16 years ago.

“We don't have a full answer for what the improvement is grounded in today. That’s a task for us and the research community to analyze. At the same time we know what contributes to a good school. It’s to do with developing education, getting more people to become teachers and providing the right conditions for the school. We still have a bit to go until we reach the top results of the Pisa study done in 2000,” the Swedish National Agency for Education acting head said in a press statement.

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EDUCATION

Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

Children between ages 6-9 years should be allowed admittance to after-school recreation centers free of charge, according to a report submitted to Sweden’s Minister of Education Lotta Edholm (L).

Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

“If this reform is implemented, after-school recreation centers will be accessible to the children who may have the greatest need for the activities,” said Kerstin Andersson, who was appointed to lead a government inquiry into expanding access to after-school recreation by the former Social Democrat government. 

More than half a million primary- and middle-school-aged children spend a large part of their school days and holidays in after-school centres.

But the right to after-school care is not freely available to all children. In most municipalities, it is conditional on the parent’s occupational status of working or studying. Thus, attendance varies and is significantly lower in areas where unemployment is high and family finances weak.

In this context, the previous government formally began to inquire into expanding rights to leisure. The report was recently handed over to Sweden’s education minister, Lotta Edholm, on Monday.

Andersson proposed that after-school activities should be made available free of charge to all children between the ages of six and nine in the same way that preschool has been for children between the ages of three and five. This would mean that children whose parents are unemployed, on parental leave or long-term sick leave will no longer be excluded. 

“The biggest benefit is that after-school recreation centres will be made available to all children,” Andersson said. “Today, participation is highest in areas with very good conditions, while it is lower in sparsely populated areas and in areas with socio-economic challenges.” 

Enforcing this proposal could cause a need for about 10,200 more places in after-school centre, would cost the state just over half a billion kronor a year, and would require more adults to work in after-school centres. 

Andersson recommends recruiting staff more broadly, and not insisting that so many staff are specialised after-school activities teachers, or fritidspedagod

“The Education Act states that qualified teachers are responsible for teaching, but that other staff may participate,” Andersson said. “This is sometimes interpreted as meaning that other staff may be used, but preferably not’. We propose that recognition be given to so-called ‘other staff’, and that they should be given a clear role in the work.”

She suggested that people who have studied in the “children’s teaching and recreational programmes” at gymnasium level,  people who have studied recreational training, and social educators might be used. 

“People trained to work with children can contribute with many different skills. Right now, it might be an uncertain work situation for many who work for a few months while the employer is looking for qualified teachers”, Andersson said. 

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