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EDUCATION

Sweden to look at centralised marking to fight grade inflation

Sweden's government has launched an inquiry into returning to a centralised marking system to reduce grade inflation in schools.

Sweden to look at centralised marking to fight grade inflation
The grades received by an upper secondary school student in Sweden. Photo: Anders Wiklund/TT

Sweden’s schools minister Lotta Edholm told public broadcaster SVT that the inquiry was intended to help solve “the big problems we have with grade setting”. 

Edholm has appointed Magnus Henrekson, professor at the Research Institute for Industrial Economics, to lead the inquiry, which will look at whether it makes sense for Sweden to return to centralised grade setting from the current system, where students’ grades are set by their own teachers. 

Henrekson said that he aimed to look at the old centralised grading system and the challenges to reinstating it. 

“Historically Sweden had this and that’s what we’re going to look at,” he said. “How did it work in Sweden in the old days, and is it old fashioned and unusable today or are there aspects we could take up now and modernise,” he told SVT. 

The Swedish Teachers’ Union published a survey on Wednesday which found that six out of ten teachers had been pressured to give higher marks to students than they felt were merited, with the pressure particularly high in privately owned free schools. 

Other agencies, researchers and institutions in Sweden’s education sector had repeatedly highlighted the problem with grade inflation, known in Sweden as glädjebetyg, literally “joy grades”.  

Lars Strannegård, head of the Stockholm School of Economics, has even floated the idea of his university launching its own entrance exam as it can no longer trust the grades with which students leave upper secondary school. 

The Swedish Schools Inspectorate also recently published a report that found that head teachers in Sweden generally had a poor grasp of whether their students were receiving higher grades than they deserved. 

Henrekson is expected to submit his proposals on February 21st 2025. 

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SWEDEN AND ISRAEL

Swedish police storm student buildings occupied by Gaza activists

Police in Stockholm have stormed a student building at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, forcibly removing students protesting Israel's attack on Gaza.

Swedish police storm student buildings occupied by Gaza activists

Between ten and 15 people from the activist group KTH for Palestine reportedly occupied a part of the main student building at the university on Friday morning, hanging Palestinian flags out of the window and chanting “Palestine, Palestine”. 

According to a reporter for the TT newswire, the students were removed one-by-one through a window, after police entered the parts of the building inside which they had barricaded themselves. 

“Around 20 people have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated trespassing,” Anders Bryngelsson, a spokesperson for the police, told the newswire. 

While the police removed the protesters, a crowd of activists outside the building booed and chanted “shame on you”. By 2.30pm, police had removed the Palestinian flags the activists had hung outside the window. 

A group of ten to 15 students barricaded themselves inside the student union building at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Photo: Fredrik Persson/TT

A person connected to the student union told TT before the police entered the building that one person involved with the union had been forced to leave while another had been locked in their office until they were rescued by police. 

“They have destroyed locks and other things inside the bulding,” the person said. “They are preventing us from carrying out the work we are entrusted by other students to do.” 

Last week, several people were arrested for their involvement in a pro-Palestinian protest outside the university, with several now under investigation for breaking a ban on wearing masks. 

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