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ALMEDALEN 2022

Swedish PM pledges to ban profit making at free schools

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has pledged to stop companies withdrawing profits from schools, in what is likely to be one of the Social Democrats' main campaigning issues in the coming election campaign.

Swedish PM pledges to ban profit making at free schools
Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson holds a press conference at Sankt Hans school in Visby on Gotland. Photo: Henrik Montgomery / TT kod 10060

The proposal, one of three measures announced to “take back democratic control over the school system”, was launched on the first day of the Almedalen political festival on the island of Gotland.

On Sunday evening, Andersson is set to give the first big speech of the festival, with Ulf Kristersson, leader of the centre-right Moderate party, and Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar scheduled to make their speeches on Monday, and Sweden’s other party leaders taking slots on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  

“Schools in Sweden should focus on knowledge, not on the pursuit of profit,” Andersson said, as she made the pledge, stressing that her party aimed not only to ban withdrawing profits, but also “to make sure that all the possible loopholes are closed”. 

Free schools, she complained, siphon off billions of kronor in tax money every year at the same time as free schools increase divisions in society. 

Banning profits from schools is an obvious campaigning issue for the Social Democrats. The latest poll by Gothenburg University’s SOM Institute found that fully 67 percent of voters support such a ban.

The only issue is that the Centre Party, whose support the Social Democrats will need to form a government, is likely to block a future Social Democrat government from implementing it, something Andersson was willing to acknowledge.

“What I know is that there’s a very strong support for this among the Swedish people, but not in the Swedish parliament,” she said. 

The Social Democrats have campaigned on the issue in past elections, pledging to stoppa vinstjakten, or “stop the pursuit of profit in schools”, or, in the run-up to the 2018 election, only to see the policy blocked in the January Agreement the party did to win the support of the Centre Party and the Liberal party.  

On Sunday, Andersson would not give any details on whether companies listed on Swedish or international stockmarkets would be prevented from operating schools, saying she was leaving such details to an inquiry into reforming Sweden’s free school system the government launched on June 30th.  

In the press conference, Andersson criticised the inflated grades given out by free schools, which are dismissed by critics as glädjebetyg, literally “happy grades”.

“We end up having pupils who graduate with good marks who then realise that their school has let them down,” she said. 

At the press conference, Andersson also reiterated the Social Democrats call to ban the establishment of new religious free schools, and announced plans for a national schools choice system, stripping free schools of the ability to run their own queue systems. 

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EDUCATION

Decades of samples destroyed in Swedish uni freezer failure

Research samples collected over decades at a prestigious Swedish medical university have been destroyed after a freezer malfunctioned over the Christmas holidays, the university said on Monday.

Decades of samples destroyed in Swedish uni freezer failure

The incident has been reported to police, the university added.

The samples were stored in tanks cooled with liquid nitrogen, at a temperature of minus 190 degrees Celsius (minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit), at the medical university Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Stockholm.

KI is home to the Nobel Assembly, which is tasked with selecting a winner for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Sometime between December 22 and 23 there was an interruption in the supply of liquid nitrogen to 16 cryogenic tanks, and while the tanks can go for four days without additional liquid nitrogen, they were left without it for five, leading to the destruction of samples from multiple institutions.

“It happened at possibly the absolute worst time imaginable in Sweden, just one day before Christmas Eve,” Matti Sällberg, Dean of KI’s southern campus, told AFP.

Some media outlets reported that the estimated value of the samples lost was some 500 million kronor ($47 million). Sällberg said no official estimate of the value of the samples lost had been made, but said it was easily in the millions.

“Those worst affected are those researching leukaemia, they have gathered samples from patients over as much as 30 years,” Sällberg said.

An internal investigation has been launched at the university and despite there being no indication of sabotage, the incident has also been reported to police.

“Currently there is no indication that it was due to outside influence, but the police report was done to cover all bases,” Sällberg said.

The samples were all strictly for research so it would not affect the care of any current patients, but had been intended to be used in future research.

“These are samples that have been the subject of extensive studies and there were plans for more studies,” said Sällberg.

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