Response to interpellation 2022/23:300 on measures against the dropout of students
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns measures against the dropping out of students. L believes that the investigation should focus on improving the school and providing early interventions for students who do not reach the goals 1. L argues that the grade F is important information regarding lack of knowledge and that the limit should not be removed since students would then lack prior knowledge for upper secondary school 1 2. L wants to invest in more special education teachers, smaller groups, and more books 3. S argues that research shows that the grade F leads to increased dropping out and negative effects 4 5. S argues that the system leads to poorer knowledge development and that society cannot afford young people on social welfare 6.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! I have been asked why I and the government are changing the investigation directives for the Investigation on more paths to working life so that the investigation cannot freely propose measures to solve the problem with the large scale of students being excluded.
I want to begin by stating that the Inquiry into more paths to working life has a very important mission through its focus on students who today have difficulty reaching the goals in primary and secondary school. It is problematic that as many as 15 percent of students complete primary school without eligibility for a national program in upper secondary school.
It is obvious that the school must be improved so that all students are given the best conditions to complete school and take with them the knowledge they need to be able to support themselves. Removing the passing grade has been presented as a solution to the problem that too many children and young people do not reach the goals in school. I do not share that view. The problem is not that there is a grade for non-passing knowledge results in the grading system, but that those children who need more support and training to reach the knowledge goals are not identified early enough, or that students do not receive support in time to complete their schooling.
There is also a need to review curricula and grading criteria. Abstract requirements create a destructive stress for many children. The school's steering documents need to be reformed in accordance with children's cognitive development and intellectual maturity and receive increased focus on learning and skills as well as factual and subject knowledge. It is a series of measures that are needed to achieve a school where all students receive sufficient knowledge to manage further studies and vocational training.
Students who risk not reaching the goals shall be given support. The grade F constitutes a clear piece of information that the student has not met the requirements and that further measures may need to be taken. Since the government does not intend to present proposals that would mean that the grade F is removed, the government has, through a supplementary directive, clarified that the investigation shall not spend time and resources on producing such proposals.
I safeguard the investigation's mandate to give us more knowledge about the students who do not reach the goals in primary and secondary school and what obstacles exist for progression and establishment in the labor market, as well as to submit proposals that improve the situation for these students. The investigation has a continued broad mandate to propose measures to solve the problems with the large dropout rate of students.
Åsa Westlund (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you very much, Minister, for the answer!
In a democracy, it is not enough to just have opinions, even if it is fun to quickly form opinions in the social media we have access to. Democracy is also about taking in each other's arguments and listening to research and proven experience. That responsibility, I believe, is significantly greater for us members of Parliament and ministers than for the general public.
It is not enough to just have an opinion when you decide for millions of people in Sweden; one must also take into account how it works in reality. The research that exists on the issue being raised here, namely the threshold to upper secondary school in the form of the grade F, which has now existed for more than two decades, tells us a lot about how it works in reality. To listen to research, I would like to say, is something that ministers at the Ministry of Education have a particularly great responsibility for. They must hold the banner of knowledge high.
The starting point for my interpellation is that more people must learn more. Sweden must be able to compete with knowledge and smart, new solutions - not with low wages. We Social Democrats believe that, in the long run, almost all students in Sweden must attend upper secondary school. It is simply not enough on today's labor market to have nine years of primary school to secure a stable livelihood in continued life.
Today we know that the changes following the introduction of the grade F as a threshold for upper secondary school have very clearly resulted in that a very large group of students are ruled out immediately after primary school without even proceeding to upper secondary school. We also know that a smaller proportion pass upper secondary school after this reform. That is to say that the development is going in completely the wrong direction.
The studies that exist show that the exclusion that is now occurring, where every seventh student is prevented from continuing their studies in a national program in upper secondary school, is very costly for the individual, the family, and society. We know, in fact, that the grade F as a cutoff - not the knowledge, but the system - in itself leads to increased exclusion and that society must support a number of individuals throughout their entire lives even though they could have completed upper secondary school and obtained a more stable position on the Swedish labor market.
I mean that we must be able to look at this issue. I know it may sound like we are lowering the requirements, but we must be able to take in the research that exists and dare to evaluate this. I hope that the Minister for Education also dares to take in research and base it on what reality is telling us now, not on what her party thought 30 years ago and hold onto it even though reality has changed and shown that they were wrong.
As has been said, there are several research studies showing that the grade F as a cutoff has very negative effects on employment later in life. The Minister for Education still absolutely does not want to look at this limit. I simply wonder, Madam Speaker, what evidence the Minister for Education means there is for the system with a cutoff in the form of the grade F to upper secondary school having to remain. Is there anything that shows positive effects for students' learning outcomes?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! Of course, one should listen to research. I would say that it is a major problem that Swedish school policy has not done so. It is a huge problem now when it comes to, for example, the curricula, that they absolutely have not been built on cognitive research. The requirements may not have been set too high, but they have been completely wrongly set for a large group of students.
There is also a large group of students who have arrived late to Sweden and therefore have not passed, for example, English. There is at least a small possibility of getting into the high school's national program there, even if one has not had that opportunity.
Fundamentally, the grade F means that students do not achieve the knowledge requirements. To say that they should be able to attend the high school's national program on exactly the same terms as those who have sufficient knowledge to do so is simply to trick students into taking additional steps up in an activity that they actually do not have the prerequisites to complete.
The vast majority of students in Sweden start upper secondary school. Very few do not. On the other hand, many drop out. Many of them truly drop out and disappear from the system. There are also many who remain but who do not succeed in achieving the learning outcomes. In most cases, it is because they do not have sufficient knowledge from primary school.
Grade F is also a means of waking up primary schools to take responsibility for these students earlier. Swedish school suffers very much from a system where one pushes the problems ahead of oneself. One constantly believes that the next stage will solve the problems for a student, but that is rarely how it turns out. All research shows that the earlier one makes interventions, the better results one obtains.
The reason why I do not want the investigation to continue with this is that one writes investigation directives because one wants proposals that are to be implemented, not so that proposals are presented that one will not implement. It is also, of course, a matter of resources. The investigation should be able to devote itself to something other than something for which I will not submit proposals.
As the investigative process in Sweden functions is sometimes a great waste. There are investigations of many hundreds of pages of which very little will subsequently be implemented.
For me, it is not actually the grade F that is important, but rather that these students lack the academic prerequisites to attend the high school's national programs. They do not have the knowledge with them. If one, for example, is to become an electrician and does not have sufficient knowledge in English or mathematics, it can become directly dangerous to attend that high school education. It places high demands on having prior knowledge. I believe it is important to stick to the prerequisite requirements.
Åsa Westlund (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the answer. I appreciated several parts of the Minister's statement in the answer to my interpellation, which we heard from the rostrum here.
I share the view that those who have designed the knowledge criteria have not taken sufficient account of how children's brains function or where one is in the maturation process. I welcome that the Minister takes it up and that she intends to look further into it with a greater focus on, for example, fact learning.
I also welcome the focus on early interventions. It is extremely important. That is why the previous government introduced the literacy and numeracy guarantee and ensured that 36,000 more people could be employed in Swedish schools to support the students who have not received the help they need.
Further reinforcements are needed here, but we can save that for another debate. Right now, however, we see how the government's policy is forcing major cuts in Swedish schools. We will leave this for this time and focus on today's topic.
I intended to bring up some of the researchers I have found when I have been looking for a factual basis for this grade limit.
For example, Jonas Vlachos, who is an economist, writes that as far as he knows, there is nothing that suggests that the F-IG-limit has had positive effects for either the school system or the students. On the other hand, there is a great deal that points to negative effects for the students, for example, an increase in the number of young disability pensioners. He bases this on the research report which shows that this was actually not due to a lack of knowledge, but that one never got to attend upper secondary school. That was what made it so that one did not pass upper secondary school; one didn't even get in. The basis for that was the new grading rules, not suddenly much poorer knowledge. From one year to the next, fewer passed upper secondary school. It was due to a system that we had decided here in the Swedish Riksdag.
Let me take up a few more examples.
Anna Sjögren says in the teachers' magazine Vi lärare that the grade F risks lowering the knowledge requirements in the entire classroom. All the focus then becomes on pushing some students over the line in the final school years, and the entire teaching is thus set at too low a level for the average student to achieve the knowledge development that is needed.
Several also point out that those who, for example, attend vocational programs obviously also need knowledge in Swedish, mathematics, and English. But do you need exactly the same Swedish when you are going to study a vehicle program as when you are going to study a theoretical program such as social sciences? No, I do not think so. We must be prepared to look at the boundaries. Are they closing the door unnecessarily?
I repeat that I do not have a finished position, but I think it is regrettable that the Minister for Education already from the beginning says that she does not intend to listen to the research that exists and which says that this unnecessarily blocks the way for young people to acquire more knowledge. She intends to stick to the position she had 30 years ago, even though it has turned out to be incorrect.
I think a school minister should listen to the research. I invite the school minister once again to present any research that shows that the threshold has led to a positive result for the students or society.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! Åsa Westlund raises a very interesting debate: Are the same requirements needed for all professions? Actually, I do not think that is the case. But it is not true that one does not get into upper secondary school, because one absolutely does. The vast majority of young people start upper secondary school. That is not the problem. The problem is that in some parts, one has too low knowledge when entering, and because one has too low knowledge, one has difficulty moving over to a national program. Are there any other possibilities? Are there possibilities to introduce shorter vocational educations, perhaps with lower requirements? This is very interesting to look at.
I am, however, completely convinced that it would lead to less focus on these students if the F-level were removed. Åsa Westlund implies it herself when she says that she read an article about how one is now pushing the students over the knowledge threshold. But what would have happened if one had not pushed these students over the knowledge threshold? Then they would not have received the knowledge, and it would have been a huge problem for them, but also for everyone else who would be in the same class and reading at the same pace as the students who have not met the knowledge goals.
I think there is too much focus on the grade F and too little focus on the fact that the grade F shows that one does not have sufficient knowledge. I am, however, glad that schools really make an effort to push the students over the line.
I do, however, think that Swedish school suffers from the fact that one tries to do everything in full classes to the greatest extent possible instead of having specific smaller teaching groups for those students who really need it to reach the goals. We must make more of an effort for these students, but that in itself is no reason to remove the boundaries. If one simply removed the boundary and said "You can attend any education you want, regardless of knowledge and prior knowledge," one would only be deceiving students, and you would get a huge problem in upper secondary school instead.
Instead of pushing the problem upwards in the system and into upper secondary school, we should push the problem downwards in the system and ensure that students receive help and support early.
I do, however, oppose the image that students are not allowed to start upper secondary school, because they actually do so to a very large extent.
Åsa Westlund (S)
Madam Speaker! The starting point for this debate has, as said, been that more people should learn more. Research that exists shows that the grading system we have today leads to fewer people learning sufficiently much because fewer people graduate from upper secondary school. It is very clear. There is research on it. Therefore, I have asked the Minister for Education for research that supports her line, namely that one absolutely must not look at this because it would be harmful. Name any research report that shows that!
The research that I have found and the research that other researchers refer to shows that this leads to poorer knowledge development, not just among some students but among all students, or at least among large groups of students who then end up outside of society. As a society, we cannot afford that. We cannot afford that thousands of young people, already at the age of 16, are knocked out from continuing their studies in a national program that they could have passed; the year before this system was introduced, they did indeed pass it. They could have gotten jobs and supported themselves. Instead, they end up in long-term periods of social assistance. All the rest of us will then have to support them, instead of them having freedom with their own income and their own support.
I hope that the continuation of the government period will be characterized by an openness on the part of the government to take in the knowledge and research that exists, and that the policy pursued will not be built on old slogans that were written 30 years ago but have since been tested against reality.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! The important thing, I believe, is that we become better in Swedish schools at providing support early. It is unreasonable that so many leave primary school without sufficient knowledge to manage upper secondary school. That is what it is about. If one does not speak Swedish well enough, cannot write, cannot speak English, and does not have the basic knowledge in mathematics, one finds it very difficult to pass the national programs in upper secondary school. It is clear that one does not solve the problem by simply saying: "It is completely okay! You do not need to know anything in primary school. It doesn't matter, because you will manage upper secondary school." It goes without saying that it does not work that way.
I believe that we now must allocate much larger resources so that students receive early support in Swedish schools. We must dare to differentiate more even in primary school and ensure that there are more special education teachers, more smaller teaching groups, more books and so on, so that these students receive support early. Then we must also find systems for a better upper secondary school for those students who do not meet the knowledge requirements. I believe that is important. That is why the primary goal of this investigation is to find such paths. I truly look forward to seeing more of that.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.