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Teacher in the clear after feeding kids cat food

A local council in western Sweden has withdrawn its written warning against a pre-school teacher who encouraged children in her class to eat cat food earlier this year.

Teacher in the clear after feeding kids cat food

Alingsås council completed its turnaround after the teacher raised the matter with the district court. The council would not comment on Wednesday as to whether it had made the right decision when issuing the warning.

“We have decided to put this behind us and move on,” council spokesman Niels Bredberg told newspaper Alingsås Tidning.

The teacher gave the children cat food to taste when the class was working on a project about cats in February.

Local media reported at the time that it was not the first time the teacher had encouraged the children to taste feline feed.

One of the children’s parents complained to the principal, Cecilia Knutsson, who decided to take action and warn the teacher.

“You have shown poor judgment in giving the children cat food,” wrote Knutsson in the teacher’s warning letter.

Knutsson described the teacher’s actions as “unethical and inappropriate.”

The teacher was given the chance to explain her actions and the educational reasoning behind the tasting. She apologized and promised that there woul be no repeat.

Several parents expressed their support for the embattled teacher.

“We have the utmost confidence in her and her otherwise sound educational work,” wrote the parents in a plea to the disciplinary board on the teacher’s behalf.

No child was forced to eat the cat food, and besides, the food poses no danger to humans, the cat-owning teacher wrote in her statement.

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.

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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