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EDUCATION

Sweden cracks down on high-tech exam cheating ring

Swedish authorities have uncovered an organized crime plot that made at least 10 million kronor through helping prospective students cheat in a university entrance exam.

Published: 17 April 2018 15:46 CEST
Updated: 17 April 2018 16:53 CEST
Sweden cracks down on high-tech exam cheating ring
File photo of students sitting the Swedish SATs in 2013. The students pictured are not suspected of cheating. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Every year, tens of thousands of people sit the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (SweSAT, or högskoleprovet). The exam is not compulsory, but prospective students can use their results to help them get into university.

Cheating has been a problem for years, with authorities struggling to identify the offenders. But on Saturday, while the exam was taking place, the Swedish Economic Crime Authority hit several addresses in a raid.

Three people have been arrested so far, and prosecutors warn more are to come.

The network at the centre of the affair is said to have been operating for four or five years, marketing itself online and on social media and has been using advanced equipment including earpieces.

“This is very serious from a societal perspective – both legally and morally. They have contributed to people being able to buy places on attractive courses,” prosecutor Per Hedman told the TT news agency.

One of the three people arrested – a father and his two sons – was an exam invigilator. The trio deny any criminal offence but have made “certain confessions” according to prosecutors, reports TT.

Around 70 people are believed to have cheated on this year's SweSAT test, which was held in 120 locations in Sweden and abroad. More than 75,000 people in total had signed up to sit the test.

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The Swedish Council of Higher Education said it had first been tipped off to organized cheating with the help of earpieces in autumn 2015, and has since been trying to crack down on it.

Measures have included increasing the number of invigilators and making people hand in their mobile phones during the test. Discussions have also been held about frisking people before they enter the exam rooms.

The Council of Higher Education also started carrying out more comprehensive analyses of people's exam answers, which led to around 50 people being discovered cheating.

Six of these had to terminate their university education (five medical students at Karolinska Institute – which has some of the toughest entry requirements in Sweden – and one at KTH Royal Institute of Technology).

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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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