Response to interpellation 2022/23:24 on the cultural school as a part of the welfare society
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns the role of the cultural school in the welfare society. M believes that the municipal cultural school is significant for the creativity of children and young people 1 and that it is the provider's responsibility to show flexibility and cooperate 2. M argues that the cultural school is primarily a municipal matter 2 and that the government protects the culture budget despite a difficult economic situation 3. M believes that it is irresponsible to raise taxes to double the grant 4. S believes that all children should have equal access to the cultural school 5 6 and that fees create unequal conditions 5. S argues that the government underfinances the welfare 7.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Kulturministern Parisa Liljestrand (M)
Madam Speaker! Linus Sköld has asked me how I will act to enable cultural school teaching during school hours. Linus Sköld has also asked how I intend to act to ensure all children's equal and equitable access to the practice of culture.
I would like to begin by emphasizing that the municipal cultural school conducts an important activity for children and young people. In the cultural school, an important foundation is laid for creativity and participation. It also contributes to a renewal of both artists and cultural practitioners.
It is common for the culture school's teaching to take place in the school's premises. This facilitates for schools with many traveling students to participate in the teaching in close connection to the school day. To clarify how individual teaching for the culture school's students can be conducted during the school day, the Swedish Arts Council, together with the National Agency for Education, has published information material that clarifies which rules apply and how the responsibility is distributed between the school and the culture school.
In the spring of 2018, the Riksdag adopted national goals for state interventions in support of the municipal culture school. The culture school's opportunities to offer children and young people high-quality education in cultural and artistic expressions shall be promoted, as well as the opportunities for both deepening and broadening in the education - of course with the starting point of each's respective circumstances.
The State has a number of ongoing initiatives for the municipal cultural school. In order for more children and young people to have the opportunity to participate in the cultural school's activities, there are 100 million kronor for the purpose for 2023 to the Swedish Arts Council for the distribution of development grants to the cultural school. The grant aims, among other things, to stimulate the development of the cultural school by broadening and deepening its offerings and teaching for new target groups.
A national culture school center at the Swedish Arts Council was established in 2018 with the mandate to support the municipal culture school by, among other things, distributing grants and identifying both development and educational needs. The initiative Kulturskoleklivet aims to meet the shortage of trained educators in the culture school.
From the national cultural policy goals, it appears that children's and young people's right to culture shall be given particular attention. In addition to the state's efforts for the municipal cultural school, there is the initiative Skapande skola, through which children and young people get to participate in art and culture in school and are also given the opportunity for their own creation. The Government also supports literacy-promoting initiatives for children and young people.
The municipal cultural school is significant for children and young people to take part in and also be given the opportunity to practice different art forms. It is also an important meeting place for children and young people from different parts of society, and it contributes to giving children and young people a meaningful leisure time.
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Parisa Liljestrand, for the opportunity to debate such an important issue as children's equal opportunities to participate in cultural activities!
I want to start by saying: Thank you, the cultural school! As a child, I was a hopelessly tone-deaf boy. The path from there to becoming someone who hits the notes when it's time to sing—Yes, may he live!—has gone through the cultural school. I never, for my part, became any particularly good singer. I never got any particularly good ear, but I learned to sing well enough in tune for it to open up a whole world of context that I otherwise would never have had access to—a world of sing-alongs and choral singing.
So thank you, the cultural school, for the joy that it means to sing together! Thank you, the cultural school, for the education, both profane and sacred, that the singing has given me! Thank you, the cultural school, for the self-confidence it has given to overcome the difficulty and conquer a new mode of expression!
The joy, education, and self-esteem that practicing culture can provide should be something all children and young people are given equal opportunities to. Therefore, all children should have equal access to the activities of the culture school.
Madam Speaker! So that this is not just about anecdotes from my own life, I have ordered a report from the Riksdag's investigation service to clarify the situation regarding the possibility of participation and which children actually participate in the activities. The latest figures are from 2020. At that time, there were 3 of the country's 290 municipalities that did not have any culture school at all. A quick estimate shows that approximately 3,000 children and young people therefore completely lack the opportunity to participate in the culture school's activities.
The culture school is also fee-financed in the majority of municipalities. The fees vary greatly. Only 22 municipalities had a completely fee-free culture school in 2020. The average fee this year was 1,363 kronor. Even low fees can become high thresholds for socioeconomically disadvantaged or families with small margins – buy a new winter jacket or pay for instrument rental, afford Christmas presents or pay the participation fee? Fee-financing creates unequal access to the culture school's important activities.
Madam Speaker! About 175,000 children, or approximately 10 percent of the 6-19 age group, participate in the activities of the culture school. About 60 percent of them are girls. Over 80 percent of the students have at least one parent with post-secondary education. Students with a foreign background are clearly underrepresented. In summary, it is children, more often girls than boys, with Swedish ethnic background and academically educated parents who participate in the culture school.
We Social Democrats believe that all children and young people should be given the opportunity to participate in the culture school and that it should therefore be given the conditions to develop long-term and be made accessible on equal terms throughout the country. That was also why I asked the Minister for Culture what she intends to do to ensure children's rich and equal access to culture.
The Minister has today given an answer which I would summarize approximately as follows:
The Minister thinks that the cultural school is important. That is good.
The Minister accounts for the measures that the previous government has taken.
The Minister concludes by pointing out that the cultural school is important.
The only thing that appears as traces of Parisa Liljestrand's own policy for the culture school is the announcement to halve the development grant to the culture school.
I therefore thought of giving the minister another chance: What does Parisa Liljestrand want to do to ensure children's equal access to the culture school?
Kristoffer Lindberg (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Linus Sköld, for a good interpellation!
All people have a right to culture and education. Our cultural habits are often created as early as childhood. Access to music, theater, visual arts, and artistic expression cannot be taken for granted. Here, the cultural school has an incredibly important role in providing children and young people with opportunities for cultural practice. The cultural school must be accessible on equal terms throughout the country for all children regardless of background.
The development we have seen since 2019, where schools, out of fear of sanctions from Skolinspektionen, remove students' opportunities to participate in the culture school's lessons during regular school hours, has enormous consequences for the municipal culture school, not least in rural areas and the countryside. Students out in the villages here in Hälsingland do not have the possibility to travel to the central town in the evening. There is no subway. There is not even a bus all the time. It is also no given that all children have parents who have the possibility to drive them, in some cases an eight-mile round trip. Then you can imagine how it looks in those parts of the country that are even more sparsely populated.
Without the municipal culture school's ability to conduct teaching during the day, certain students are excluded from the opportunity to participate in the culture school's activities, not to mention the increased queues when the lesson times become fewer. This leads to a cultural exclusion and further cements the unequal participation in the culture school.
This issue is fundamentally a very practical and operational concern, where the solution obviously lies in the school and culture school staff being able to find solutions without it affecting the students' knowledge development. Here, however, it is clear that support and clarity from the minister and the government are needed.
I meet municipal culture chiefs who say that they are worried about whether the culture school will be able to remain if the government does not resolve this issue. I and all of Sweden's students, parents, and teachers are therefore calling for answers from the government and the Minister for Culture on how they intend to promptly resolve this situation, which is already a reality today in more and more municipalities across our country.
The Minister for Culture refers in his interpellation answer to the guidelines that the Arts Council and the National Agency for Education have developed. There it can be read: "Children and young people may participate in the arts school's individual instruction during the school day if it is given in direct connection with the student's school day, before or after the school day begins and ends. Arts school instruction may also take place during free periods and longer breaks."
I want to pause here for a moment. That students at all are dependent on being able to play their instrument during school hours and that this in some cases to some extent takes up a small part of regular teaching time is due to the issues with long distances and non-existent public transport that I mentioned earlier.
Here, the Minister for Culture refers to the fact that children can play at the school before or after the school day. My very concrete question to the Minister, and I believe the country's 290 municipalities and 3,500 culture school teachers are interested in the answer, is: Should we interpret the Minister's answer as that the government is now allocating targeted funds for expanded procurement of school transport for the municipalities? The Minister surely cannot mean that the solution lies in all students from the same village traveling to school earlier or staying longer at the school because one student from the same village plays an instrument? How should we interpret the Minister's reference to the aforementioned guidelines?
My question is actually very simple: Which solution is the minister advocating for? Is it extra money for double school transport, or is it long waiting times before or after school for the children who do not play an instrument?
Kulturministern Parisa Liljestrand (M)
Madam Speaker! I will begin with the question Kristoffer Lindberg just asked from the rostrum regarding how to organize the culture school in relation to the school and the school day for children and young people. Indeed, an information material has been published that the Arts Council has developed together with the National Agency for Education, which I also mentioned earlier. The idea is that through it, one should receive help in clarifying rules and the distribution of responsibility between the school and the culture school.
It is also the head of the school who bears the responsibility for students completing their schooling. In that head of school responsibility lies, which is also described in the information material, also the ability to manage to adapt the operations, show flexibility in relation to the culture school, and be able to cooperate on solutions. There also lies a great responsibility at the head of school level.
Then we must remember that the culture school is a municipal matter. It is municipal culture schools we have. For the very largest part, they are also financed by municipal funds. Last year, 2.7 billion kronor were allocated to the culture school via the municipalities. The state support that has been given is extremely important in order to be able to promote both breadth and excellence regarding culture school activities. But it is still state support; the largest part of the financing comes from the municipalities themselves.
It is also the municipalities themselves that, to a large extent, must figure out how they want to work with this issue, and it naturally looks different in different municipalities in the country. There, I believe absolutely that there must be a dialogue between the principal and the culture school's operations. There must also be a dialogue between the municipality and the place where the culture school's operations are carried out or are to be carried out in order to be able to achieve flexible solutions and be able to adapt.
This starts already early. Everyone who has worked in the school, which I have done, knows that it is about the culture school already early, i.e., when one starts looking at schematic planning, being there so that one can enable children and young people to receive a culture school education that works for the rest of their lives - and also in relation to the rest of the school, naturally.
Madam Speaker! I shall also spend a short moment answering Member Sköld's question regarding how I and the government intend to work with the cultural school to promote children's and young people's equal right to culture.
Linus Sköld points out that the government has allocated 100 million kronor to the arts school. I interpret this as the member thinking it is too little, since the member commented that a higher level was had previously. In relation to that, I am proud that we, despite the difficult economic situation that Sweden finds itself in today, manage to return to the level for funds for the arts school that was given already in 2019 by the then government, that is, 100 million kronor.
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! As I said in conclusion in my previous contribution, that halving of the development grant, which the government has proposed, is Parisa Liljestrand's only answer on how she will work to increase accessibility to the cultural school.
I suspected that Parisa Liljestrand otherwise would not answer my question, which she did not do either. I therefore did the homework for Parisa Liljestrand. I first checked in the Tidö Agreement, as it is the basis for the government's policy. The keyword kulturskola gave exactly zero results.
I went further and checked Parisa Liljestrand's party's own election promises. On the Moderaterna website, under the heading "Moderaterna want to prioritize children and young people's opportunities for culture," one can still read that "Moderaterna want all children and young people to have a share of art and culture. The municipal cultural schools play a very important role here, where the work to also reach children and young people in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas should be developed." There is also a strikethrough where it says that Moderaterna want to "ensure that the cultural school prioritizes reaching more children and young people in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas." This is Moderaterna's election promise for the 2022 election.
The S-led government introduced the development grant for the cultural schools in 2016. One of the criteria for the grant is that it may be given to municipalities that use it to implement initiatives to strengthen cultural school activities in areas with socioeconomic challenges or in rural areas. That is how it has also become.
In the government's own budget bill, under the heading "Result reporting", it states: "The applications have primarily focused on reaching new target groups in, for example, socioeconomically disadvantaged areas." The government grant has led to the culture school reaching new target groups. During 2021, 33,000 children and students were given the opportunity to engage in culture within the framework of the culture school. They otherwise would not have been reached. The development grant is therefore designed to deliver exactly what the Moderaterna campaigned on, that the culture school should prioritize reaching children and young people in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas.
The right-conservative government has, however, made it its trademark to say one thing before the election and another thing after the election. Now Parisa Liljestrand halves the contribution that was to deliver her own election promise when it comes to the cultural school. But that is not enough. The government is also underfunding welfare. As Parisa Liljestrand pointed out, the cultural school is a municipal matter. The risk is that the underfunding of welfare that the government is proceeding with leads to cuts to the cultural school otherwise. The 2.7 billion that Parisa Liljestrand mentioned will likely decrease. It is quite likely when one underfunds welfare in the way the government does.
There is another step in this rocket. In Dagens Nyheter today, there is an interview with the Minister for Culture. It is not enough that she stands firm on the fact that the grant shall be halved; she also cannot answer whether the development grant will remain at all from 2024 onwards.
I want, just like Kristoffer Lindberg, to point out that many are wondering. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of children and young people and their families, thousands of teachers and a group of opposition politicians. We want to know if the minister intends to abolish the development grant entirely.
Kristoffer Lindberg (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister for Culture, for the answer!
Yes, it is a principal's responsibility. But it is clear that we have a situation where the School Inspectorate's order causes problems for the culture school and the school principals. Since the guidelines that have been mentioned obviously do not resolve the issues presented in the interpellation, I wonder what the minister intends to do to save the culture school and the possibility for all students to participate in the culture school's activities. It is not enough to just point at the municipalities.
That students participate in the culture school's teaching during the school day is an arrangement that has functioned well in Sweden for many decades. It has been a given. Are we to interpret it as that it is suddenly a major catastrophe for previous generations that they had to leave a lesson in order to be able to play their violin, tuba, bassoon, or double bass, as I played, during the day at school? It has taken up a limited, small part of regular teaching.
I mean the opposite, that it has been of great benefit both for the individual student and their development and for Sweden's role as a strong music export nation. The foundation for an artistic career choice is often laid in the municipal music school. I believe we agree on that. It opens doors, and it widens horizons. It uplifts people, and it develops.
It can also be noted that the social utility of the culture school is discussed in the Kulturskoleutredningen's report from 2016. The investigation states that culture has increasingly come to be regarded as a utility that should "stimulate cognitive, personal and social development" and that it is a strength that artistic activity can have those types of positive effects.
Does the Minister for Culture agree with this? How will the Minister, in that case, act now to resolve the situation that we are debating here today? The Minister is still responsible for the answer.
Kulturministern Parisa Liljestrand (M)
Madam Speaker! I am somewhat surprised by Linus Sköld's position on the budget. Linus Sköld should know by this point that a budget is laid out on an annual basis, that is to say, we provide notice of what is going to happen. The development grant has since 2016 been there with a stop at 2024, unless more funds are added.
Just as I said in Dagens Nyheter, which Linus Sköld has obviously taken note of, I cannot answer today whether more funds will be added or not. It is therefore not a matter of us saying no to any further development grants or development support to the culture school. We will have to address that when we have discussed the budget in its entirety before the upcoming budget.
Connected to that, I want to raise again that it is a strength that the government, despite the difficult economic situation that Sweden has, the recession that we are heading into and the inflation that is currently digging deep holes in people's wallets, protects the culture budget. We do this by investing in children and young people through, among other things, the development grant to the culture school, which is a complement to the regular funding from the municipalities. The 100 million kronor are incredibly important to create participation, breadth, excellence and depth, as I mentioned earlier, and to enable new target groups to reach the culture school. That was also raised by Linus Sköld.
We must also remember that municipal culture and municipal music schools today exist in 286 of 290 municipalities. That is, 286 municipalities that today do a fantastic job of providing a culture school for children and young people.
Among other things, through the development grant and other initiatives, the state supports and promotes the activities of the culture school. This is done, among other things, via Kulturskolecentrum, which was established in 2018, and via Kulturskoleklivet. This government naturally intends to continue with those parts. These are extremely important initiatives, not only to make it possible for more children and young people to take part in the culture school's activities but also to ensure that there is competence available to teach children and young people. That is also important.
I would like to say to members Lindberg and Sköld that an investigation was conducted before the bill was submitted in 2018. It was looked into whether the state should have a greater influence over the culture school, even whether it should be legislated or not. But that was ruled out. It was established that it was not a good idea.
It is important that the municipalities are allowed to continue to be the primary authorities over the municipal cultural schools and that municipal self-government is preserved.
It is important to remember that the state's contribution is important, but it is also a contribution to a municipal activity.
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! Let me begin by commenting on the budgeting. Parisa Liljestrand proudly declares that she has protected culture in difficult times. I would like to say that this government spends more than double as much on lowering taxes for high-income earners as they provide in general supplements to welfare. At the same time, they halve the grant to the culture school. To describe a halving as an investment is lovely semantics.
The cultural school's competence supply is a matter for a completely different interpellation debate. It is complicated material, and I do not want to use my last minute here to discuss it.
I will summarize instead. Not all municipalities offer a culture school. The fees vary and can be a high threshold for economically disadvantaged families. Participation is unequal, and the Minister for Culture is halving or phasing out the state grant to the culture schools. That is as much as we have established today.
The problems Kristoffer Lindberg has pointed out today are that around two-thirds of the cultural schools conduct teaching within the framework of the compulsory school's teaching time, preferably in municipalities where the students have a long travel distance to school. In Gislaved, which was the first case to receive a reprimand from the inspection, participation has dropped and the supply of competence has been hindered. If the minister intends to continue pretending that the problem does not exist or is not her risk, the cultural school risks being completely dismantled in all rural municipalities. Access to the cultural school's activities will also become worse for those students who have weak support from home. Participation thus risks becoming even more unequal than it already is.
If the Minister is serious with her repeated claims that the cultural school is important, I think she needs to go back to the department and consider what she should do to strengthen it instead of dismantling it.
Kulturministern Parisa Liljestrand (M)
Madam Speaker! We can argue about the budget and the semantics. What we cannot argue about is the S-budget presented today, where the Social Democrats admittedly want to double the level of the development grant to the culture school to 200 million kronor. But what we must remember is that what the Social Democrats are doing is raising taxes for 1 million Swedes. I think that is irresponsible when Sweden is already in a tough position. It will become even tougher for the families who are already struggling and fighting with their finances. I do not think that is reasonable.
The cultural policy goals state that children and young people are a priority target group. The municipal cultural school is significant for children and young people to participate in and also practice different art forms. I stand by that. The cultural school is also an important meeting place for children and young people from different parts of society, regarding our discussion on the impact on socioeconomics. The cultural school is also important with regard to a meaningful leisure time.
The state's efforts are about strengthening the infrastructure for the culture school and creating conditions. The state's investments also have significance for individual children and young people, for society as a whole, and for the livelihood of cultural creators. It is therefore also the culture school that is a contributing factor to Sweden being a leading music export nation.
The cultural school is important and is a priority for me. How the member then wants to interpret the whole thing is left to the observer's eye.
Madam Speaker! I state that I continue to be proud of the government's investments in the cultural school. Without raising taxes for 1 million Swedes, we are still adding 100 million kronor to the cultural school.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.