(cont. from § 7) Teachers and students and the National Audit Office's report on the system for teacher certification (cont. UbU9 and UbU16)
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD considers that Swedish school is good but has deficiencies regarding young people's mental health 1. KD wants to introduce mandatory mental health in the curriculum and a school health guarantee with targeted state grants as well as routine talks with a counselor 1. KD argues that screen time and social media damage concentration and that the school must counteract the "TikTok brain" through a mobile ban in school 1. KD argues that the government is making investments in psychiatry and directing state grants to school health to shorten queues 2. KD expects municipal councilors to take responsibility for ensuring that the money reaches the students 3. S argues that school health is understaffed and that municipalities are saving on school 4. S questions how the money actually reaches the municipalities and asks about the government's responsibility for ensuring that the school act's requirements for special support are followed 5.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Mathias Bengtsson (KD)
Mr. Speaker! There is very much in the Swedish school system that is fantastic. Swedish school is actually significantly better than the public debate sometimes suggests. The international TIMSS report shows that Swedish students are above the OECD average in mathematics and science subjects. If one only counted students who have Swedish as a mother tongue, Sweden would be the highest-performing country in the report outside of East Asia. One could also mention that 92 percent of Swedish teachers in upper secondary school are satisfied with their jobs.
If one wants to continue to look for individual bright examples, there are as many as one can find. It is easy to talk about all those teachers who every day take the time and help students to crack the code of reading or to understand the world. They are teachers who take the time to explain an equation one more time, who challenge a student who finds it easy to learn, and who lift up a student who has lost faith in their own ability.
Every day, such efforts take place across all of Sweden. These are efforts that become decisive for students' futures, that shape individual people and that shape the future for thousands of children, but which perhaps rarely make headlines. It is this school staff who create a school where no one is held back and no one is left behind.
Even though Swedish school may be better than its reputation, there are major deficiencies that need to be addressed and that need to be solved. Our task as politicians is to do just that. If one is to talk about the school's challenges, Mr. Speaker, one must talk about young people's mental health. There is a great deal of research showing that mental health and school failure are linked. Cause and effect often go both ways – mental health leads to school failure, and school failure leads to mental health.
In a large survey recently, 15 percent of Sweden's school students – 110,000 children – stated that they were feeling unwell at that time. The students themselves stated that their mental health affected their school results. It is not particularly difficult to understand. It is clear that sleep difficulties, anxiety, and high absence also have an impact on the grades.
I believe that one needs to distinguish between different forms of mental ill-health and be able to speak about it in several nuances. There are, of course, certain forms of mental ill-health that require professional care and treatment, but there are also some that can be alleviated with only the right support and understanding.
I believe that we need to increase knowledge about mental health among everyone in society, not least among our children and young people. In school, we have the opportunity to provide children with knowledge about mental health. They can benefit from this knowledge throughout their lives, even if it, so to speak, does not appear on the test.
We Christian Democrats are convinced that it is time to clearly place mental health on the agenda in the curriculum as a mandatory component, where students, among other things, get to learn to put words on their feelings and to understand why one feels worry or anxiety and how this can be managed. They need to learn to manage conflicts and crises and to understand that the stress one may feel before an exam is not always dangerous. They would then also get to learn what affects mental health – including screen time and social media.
In many other countries, they have had this for a long time. There is support in the research that it works, and WHO recommends it – children feel better, and mental ill-health decreases. It is therefore time that this is implemented in Sweden as well.
Mr. Speaker! Student health is another important aspect of the school's work against mental ill-health, but access to student health varies considerably across the country. This needs to be improved and become more equal. The Christian Democrats' policy therefore aims to direct state grants towards student health and introduce a student health guarantee so that every student has the right to come into contact with student health within a reasonable time.
We also want to see routine conversations with a counselor. Today, students have routine conversations with the school nurse and have routine health checks. We want them to have this also with the school counselor so that the school can better detect and prevent mental ill-health at an early stage.
Mr. Speaker! I would also like to mention a specific form of mental ill-health – a disability that makes children and young people extra vulnerable to everything that disturbs and breaks routines – namely ADHD. The prognosis says that 15 percent of all boys with today's development will have an ADHD diagnosis in the near future. There are many explanations for this, one of which is increased knowledge in society and among professionals, and another is a possible diagnostic shift.
Other explanations are also highlighted. One explanation is that the school has pushed this forward and, without there being any support for it, requires a diagnosis to give the children the help they need. Another explanation is that the knowledge goals have been too vague and unrealistic.
There are many parts to this, but the school has also found it harder to manage the students. In a survey, almost all teachers said that the students' perseverance has deteriorated in an alarming way in recent years. Teachers believe that the strongest contributing cause to this is all the quick kicks that the students are used to getting in the digital world. One teacher writes: Today, Swedish school competes with social media, and we are losing the battle. Another teacher writes: The majority of students have a concentration span of 2–3 minutes.
Mr. Speaker! It is quite obvious that several of the problems we see around us begin and end with the screen. The things children and young people need to feel well – namely sleep, movement, recreation, and relationships – are being sidelined. Instead, they sit glued to the screen hour after hour and scroll endlessly straight into meaninglessness.
It is possible to link both mental health, concentration, and academic results to the screens. Today's students have practically all the world's entertainment within constant reach, and only one in five students does their homework without digital distraction. A challenge in today's screen society is to get the children to lift their gaze and learn the basics. The school must therefore be a force that stands up in the fight against the TikTok brain and its demands for quick kicks and entertainment.
The school needs to focus on children learning to count, write, and endure reading longer texts without quick kicks and shortcuts. It requires a bit of good old-fashioned, boring drudgery, quite simply. Therefore, the government is now ensuring that all students from preschool class up to year 9 receive a mobile-free schooling. The mobile ban shall also apply during breaks and during free time. Every morning, all schools in the entire country will collect the students' mobiles and keep them in storage for the entire school day.
For a long time, a zeal for digitalization has raged in schools, Mr. Speaker. Everything digital has been considered good in the name of modernity, regardless of content, but that time is over. The digital faith has reached its end, for now the school shall return to the basics.
Mats Wiking (S)
Mr. Speaker! It was interesting to listen to the member. He often raises the issue of children's mental health, which I also did in my speech.
We see that mental ill-health is increasing among young people. On that, we are in complete agreement. At the same time, many schools testify that school health services are insufficient and that more students are becoming stay-at-home students. School health services are often understaffed, which I believe the member was touching upon, and the queues to BUP are growing.
It is honorable to raise the question, but we see that most municipalities have a savings target for the school today. I then think it will be quite difficult to expand student health, which the member also says needs to be done. In what way will the member and the Kristdemokraterna work to ensure that the money actually reaches student health out in the municipalities?
Mathias Bengtsson (KD)
Mr. Speaker! I thank Member Mats Wiking for the question and for the shared commitment to the group that suffers from mental ill-health and so desperately needs both school health services and child and adolescent psychiatry but unfortunately does not receive it. It is serious when a student takes courage and reaches out a hand but is met by an absence note on the school counselor's door, for example.
What is the government doing then to ensure that the money reaches school health services? Yes, partly we are directing the state grant to specifically reinforcements of staff groups other than teachers, for example school counselors or other staff who can contribute to school health, and partly we are making the largest investment ever in psychiatry and in child and adolescent psychiatry so that the queues there will decrease. We also have an inquiry regarding higher legal requirements on the municipalities to deliver an accessible school health service and to ensure that the handover of those students who need to be transferred from school health to child and adolescent psychiatry becomes seamless.
These are initiatives that will make a difference for Sweden's students.
Mats Wiking (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you for the answer, Mathias Bengtsson!
It is interesting that those investments are on the government's table and that we simultaneously see that they are not becoming a reality out in the municipalities. One has to save quite a lot at one end because one does not receive the state grants that would be needed generally to be able to increase the staffing in the schools. Then it happens that school health comes last in the schools, because the focus is primarily on teachers and educators.
In the municipalities that I am aware of in Western Sweden, student health services have not been expanded anywhere, so one might wonder where the targeted state grants are going. It surely cannot be the member's and the government's ambition for the money to disappear somewhere, so to speak. What responsibility is the government prepared to take to ensure that the School Act's requirements for special support are actually followed in all schools and that the funds targeted at students in need of special support actually reach the students?
Mathias Bengtsson (KD)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you for the question, member!
What responsibility does the government have to ensure that the investments reach the students? Naturally, the investments should reach the students; we are making these investments in school health so that the money reaches school health and fewer children get stuck in a queue when they need help from the school. I naturally expect that the Social Democratic municipal councilors out in the municipalities also take their responsibility, seek the funds, and ensure that they make a difference so that the children receive their investments.
We see, for example, already today that the queues to child and adolescent psychiatry are decreasing because the money is making a difference. I therefore do not at all share the member's view that these are funds disappearing into thin air.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.