Response to interpellation 2022/23:310 on grade inflation
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
The debate concerns grade inflation and its causes. L considers the problem to be serious and that the government has taken measures for fair assessment 1. L wants to broaden Skolinspektionens supervision, reform steering documents, carry out a restructuring of the friskole system with tougher rules 1 as well as link the grading more clearly to national tests 2. L argues that uncertainty regarding grading criteria drives mental ill-health and that the Socialdemokraterna have shown a lack of interest in the school through million-dollar savings 3. S argues that the profit motive in the market school drives grade inflation 4 5. S considers the government's strategy to be toothless 4 6 and that the budget implies the largest cut to the school since 2007 7. S wants an investigation into the competition situation and the profit motive 8.
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! Aylin Fazelian has asked me how I intend to ensure that the profit interest in Swedish schools does not drive grade inflation.
I want to begin by emphasizing that I take the issue of secure and equal grading very seriously. Grading constitutes the exercise of public authority, and the grades set in school must be based on the teacher's professional judgment, be fair, and show what knowledge the students have, not which school they have attended. The principal has a responsibility to ensure that grades are set in accordance with the regulations, and ultimately, each school principal is responsible for ensuring that the Education Act and other regulations are followed. Pressure on teachers who are responsible for grading should, of course, not occur from principals or guardians or from any other source. It is not acceptable.
The government has already taken several measures to promote a more equitable assessment and grading, and I would like to highlight some of them here.
The Government has tasked the Swedish Schools Inspectorate with reporting on the measures the authority takes in the area. Currently, the Swedish Schools Inspectorate is conducting a quality review of the principal's management and leadership for a fair and equitable grading. The review report is expected now in June. Furthermore, the Swedish National Agency for Education has been tasked with developing regulations on how school administrators, principals, and teachers within the systematic quality work shall work to ensure that grades are set in a fair manner.
The government has thus begun extensive work with the objective of significantly reducing the scope for quality deficiencies, to which grade inflation belongs. The Swedish Schools Inspectorate, which exercises supervision over the school system, plays an important role here. In accordance with what appears in the Tidö Agreement, the Swedish Schools Inspectorate's supervisory mandate is intended to be broadened to an increased mandate to follow up on schools' results based on objective quality criteria. The Swedish Schools Inspectorate shall conduct more inspections, to a greater extent also unannounced, in all school activities and more inspections in school activities that have previously received a formal order.
The Government also intends to review and reform the steering documents in accordance with children's cognitive development, with increased focus on learning and skills as well as on factual and subject knowledge. The Government also intends, as previously announced, to appoint an inquiry to review possible measures to promote equality in grading and counter grade inflation. Overall, the Government has thus implemented and intends to implement measures aimed at making grading more equal and improving it for both students and teachers.
It should be emphasized that grade inflation occurs in both municipal and independent schools. Regarding the latter, I would otherwise like to mention that the government has begun a comprehensive restructuring of the independent school system, which will mean that heads of independent schools who mismanage themselves will face both tougher rules and stricter fines for violations compared to today.
AYLIN FAZELIAN (S)
Madam Speaker! It is good that Lotta Edholm clearly marks her position against grade inflation. On that, we agree. Andreas Schleicher, who is the OECD's education chief and the person primarily responsible for the PISA surveys, has however directed sharp criticism at the Swedish government with an appeal to take grade inflation more seriously. He notes that parents and students deserve reliable information. If it is not, employers will not trust the grades. They will not ask where you studied, but rather where you come from and what social background you have. The "joy-grades" in Swedish schools risk undermining the construction of equality in our society.
That we now have a situation where especially the profit-driven schools give ever higher grades without the actual knowledge increasing also leads to the selection for higher studies being distorted. If we look at hard facts, this means that students who receive fair grades are outcompeted on unfair grounds.
Recent reports on grade inflation have had an additional frightening dimension. The review shows that many teachers are pressured by principals to give higher grades in order to receive higher salaries. In other words, fair grades risk resulting in lower salaries. The situation is very serious.
My concern is that the government's strategy to put a stop to grade inflation in large parts is toothless and actually risks having negative consequences. The Minister for Education does not mention a single word that Sweden has an entirely unique system with market schools that has gone so far that there is a lack of international comparison. It is a system where students are seen as customers and where profit-driven schools as means of competition set higher grades than what actually corresponds to the students' knowledge. For the profit-driven schools, more students mean greater profit, and easy-to-obtain grades are used to attract more students.
This is the basis for my interpellation. An important background to why we are now seeing this extensive grade inflation is that Swedish school has been marketized, that we are completely unique with these far-reaching market adaptations, and that the consequences for our entire education system, for students and teachers, are devastating.
The Minister for Education actually seems to recoil when it comes to my criticism of the market system and the correlation of profit interests with grade inflation, by referring to the fact that grade inflation also occurs in municipal schools. But, Madam Speaker, that is precisely part of my point. The municipal schools have also been forced into a school system characterized by competition and market thinking, a system that, moreover, replaces the free schools more generously than the municipal schools, despite the fact that the municipal schools have a greater statutory responsibility and thus higher costs.
I therefore ask the Minister for Education once again: How does the Minister intend to ensure that the profit motive in Swedish schools does not drive grade inflation?
Arwin Sohrabi (S)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer! Grade inflation is a problem in many countries, but only Sweden has the Swedish grade inflation. It is only we who have experimented with combining goal-related grades with an extreme marketization of the entire school system.
Just as Aylin just explained, it is not possible to discuss grade inflation without talking about what the profit interest does. In a system where the very basic idea is that schools should compete for students while high grades are seen as objective measures of a school's quality, no degree in business economics is required to calculate what perverse incentives this creates.
The research is clear that the high grades are particularly widespread in independent schools. I can give some examples from the research: Independent schools have, on average, a higher grade inflation, measured as the difference between results on national tests and subject grades. Independent schools grade national tests more generously than municipal schools. Students from independent primary schools graduate from upper secondary school to a lower extent compared to students in the same program with corresponding grades from municipal primary schools. Students from independent upper secondary schools perform worse at higher education than students with corresponding grades from municipal upper secondary schools, and so on.
Madam Speaker! It is enough to open any newspaper to find daily testimonies that the marketization of the school is a failed experiment, and it is a failed experiment at the students' expense. It has been tried, and it has failed. Therefore, this experiment must cease.
I can take an example from Malmö, where I live myself. At one school - this is an example from just one school - an incredible 78 percent of the ninth graders last year received a higher grade in mathematics than what their results on the national test yielded. Even with this extreme grade inflation, the profitability was not sufficient, according to the owner. The owner is now in the process of winding down the school due to what is called a lack of profitability.
The problem with grade inflation is greater than this. In addition to the profit interest and the effects of competition, the issue encompasses the entire design of the grading system. I must once again repeat what has already been said and what will continue to be said in this chamber, for it cannot be said enough: It is not about the ill will of individual schools or the incompetence of individual teachers. This is about a system that must be redesigned from the ground up, for it is an experiment that has failed.
But if one listens to government representatives regarding this, one simply becomes worried, because it is spoken of that the measures should be externally oriented national tests and more controls from Skolinspektionen. It will not by far remedy this problem. The question needs to be thoroughly and carefully investigated in all its different components.
My question to the Minister is therefore: Will the government, in light of what I have said, commission an inquiry to look at the issue of grade inflation in its entirety, including the effects of profit motives? If so, I wonder when.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! Let me begin by saying that grade inflation is naturally of enormous seriousness. Just as the previous speaker pointed out, it is unfair if one receives a grade that is too high in comparison with friends at other schools. It also risks leading to the individual believing that they have better knowledge than they actually do. Handelshögskolan is not the only educational institution that has warned against this and which has seen that, for example, mathematical skills are too low. Chalmers has also done so, for example. In the long run, this naturally also leads to a loss of knowledge for Sweden as a knowledge nation as a whole.
Approximately 40 percent of all students in grade 9 receive a higher grade in mathematics than what they performed on national tests, and that is, of course, completely unacceptable. It is entirely true, just as the previous speaker says, that the problem is larger in the independent school sector than in the municipal sector, but it also occurs in the municipal world.
We are working on two different tracks, so to speak, in this issue. It is about the grading and how to address the fact that it is unequal. Just as I tried to say in the interpellation response, we are working in different ways. We are giving the School Inspectorate a clearer mandate which concerns the schools working in relation to the quality systems they have and so on. But we will also shortly appoint a grading inquiry that will be tasked with seeing how the grading can be more clearly linked to the results of the national tests. Just as the previous speaker said, this naturally requires that the national tests are digitized and that they are centrally graded, because there is also an inaccuracy in the grading of the national tests which can also create inequality.
We will also, within a few weeks, give the free school inquiry additional directives. The objective is to carry out the largest changes to the free school sector in 30 years, actually since the free school reform was introduced. The plan is that it should no longer be profitable to offer poor quality - that is what we actually see in many places.
We will ensure that it becomes easier to issue fines and easier to close schools. It is also about sanction ladders and the possibility to request a refund of school fees if they have been used for things they should not have been used for, and so on.
These two questions are connected, just as the previous speaker also spoke about. But they are two separate tracks in this – it is important to point that out.
Even though my speaking time is running out, I would like to raise another issue. It is not just about the schools, it is also about our collective responsibility. Parents put pressure on teachers and consider them, for example, to be better graders than the teachers are. I think it is a collective responsibility for all of us to say: It is actually not okay.
AYLIN FAZELIAN (S)
Madam Speaker! A decisive part in combating grade inflation is to abolish the market school. I did not receive an answer from the Minister for Education on how she views the correlation between the profit interest in Swedish schools and the increased grade inflation. We must get rid of the system that forces schools into competition for students, the system that creates pressure from both guardians as well as the school's management and owners on teachers to raise grades. I regret that it is not in the government's interest to address these issues.
Let me also comment on some of the proposals that the Minister for Education raises in his speech, as the right-wing government's tools against grade inflation.
The Minister for Education mentions the so-called extensive free school reform, which SD, M, KD, and L have agreed upon. But the proposals in the Tidö Agreement are completely toothless and even risk exacerbating the problems in Swedish schools. The proposals are welcomed by the large school corporations. The fact that the right-wing parties and SD have also landed on linking the right to profit extraction to the schools' results means that grade cheating and grade inflation are more likely to increase, given that the profit-driven schools are already generous in their grading, which we have observed in this debate.
It also appears that the government wants to appoint an inquiry into the area, but what does not appear is in what way such an inquiry would tackle the issue of unequal grading. For us Social Democrats, it is important that such an inquiry takes a holistic approach to the extensive problems surrounding grade inflation, including the competitive situation in Swedish schools and how it drives unequal grading.
It seems, however, that the government has already decided in advance to limit itself to partially already known and proven solutions. What we hear from the Minister for Education is that the results of the national tests are to be linked to the grading to a greater extent.
Madam Speaker! I am not convinced that this is the right way forward. I see instead that it could actually have the opposite effect on teaching and the students' acquisition of knowledge.
Firstly, we do not have national tests in all subjects. Secondly, it is important that the grade continues to be based on an overall assessment. It is a problematic assumption that higher requirements and greater pressure on our students regarding individual test occasions would increase learning, especially in a time when the mental ill-health among the country's students is already sky-high, not least due to the pressure they experience in school.
Every child should be met with high expectations and a belief that they can succeed. In 2022, 15 percent of students left primary school without being eligible for upper secondary school. From the Swedish National Audit Office's review, it appears that the discrepancies between national tests and grades are largest among those students who failed the national test. A strengthened connection between national tests and grading thus risks increasing that exclusion even further.
Overall, the right-wing government's policy risks rather fueling grade inflation, increasing mental ill-health, and actually doing nothing at all about the growing injustice in the wake of a market-exposed school.
Arwin Sohrabi (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the answer.
Just as it concerns other aspects of the market school's ravages, I notice a kind of strategy on the part of the government. It consists roughly of engaging in a lip service as soon as upsetting cases are highlighted in the media, and then speaking sufficiently vaguely about the need for various reforms.
I believe it is because one is painfully aware that the Swedish people are so deeply tired of the cheating, of all the injustices, and not least of the extensive waste of our common tax money. Especially in these times, it is serious that the government continues to let tax funds be squandered in this way.
Unfortunately, it is the case that apart from words and lip service, there has not been much action. The government must manage to act in this important issue.
I sincerely hope, as I said, that the government does not let this stop at crashing against individual schools and calling for stricter supervision from, for example, Skolinspektionen. As I and others have repeatedly pointed out here in the chamber, and will continue to point out, this is about a systemic error that must be addressed from the ground up.
We cannot continue to have it this way in Sweden. Ordinary people do not want it this way. The only ones I can imagine who want it this way are, in that case, the boards of the school corporations. But it is not they who rule the country, is it?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! As I said initially, grade inflation is a major problem. Now this became a bit more of a general debate on grades, and I agree that mental health is naturally also exacerbated in a system where one does not really know which grade one can get and what requirements are set for one to receive a certain grade. This is also a problem, and I believe that what most drives mental ill-health among youth in the school world is precisely this uncertainty regarding what is required.
Now we have received new and clearer curricula in primary school. The Government also intends to review them further to make them even clearer so that it becomes easier for parents, children, and also for teachers to see how the grading criteria relate to the curricula.
On the upper secondary side, we are now getting subject grades instead of course grades, something that I believe will have a major impact. It will not be as "snuttified" as it is today, but one will be able to see a long-term knowledge development where a final grade is eventually set. I believe that it will have an impact on the stress among children and young people.
With this said, I am in favor of grades in school. I believe it is important and good that we assign grades. But they must, of course, be representative. I have here attempted to present everything that the government actually does in this area.
Since it is the case that everything takes some time, and no one could be more eager than I that it should go a little, a little faster. But that is how the government's work looks, and the background is naturally that they should be well-anchored and well-prepared directives so that an investigation is given the opportunity to work in a systematic and consistent way.
Regarding what Aylin Fazelian is calling for, namely an even broader investigation, I would like to say that all of that already exists. We know what the problems are. They have been pointed out in a long series of different reports, and I think it is now better that this investigation actually gets to put forward proposals on how to solve the problems rather than us doing another huge investigation into why.
As we have already said, we know this. There are many investigations that point to all the things that have been raised in this debate, and now it is time to act.
AYLIN FAZELIAN (S)
Madam Speaker! It is still ironic that Minister for Education Lotta Edholm says that we do not need investigations into the competition situation and the market adjustments in Swedish schools because we already know this. But why then does the government do nothing?
Swedish school shall be of top class in the world. We shall have an education system that is legally secure, fair and equal. This is not compatible with the extensive market adaptations that Swedish school has been forced into, adaptations that reduce students to customers in a market and lead to schools using grades as a competitive advantage.
Here I state that the government, despite all they claim to know, nevertheless takes the side of the school providers instead of the side of the children, and that the proposals put forward by the right-wing government are completely toothless.
It is also with great concern that I see how the right-wing government's budget leads to our children and students paying the price for the economic crisis. School Minister Lotta Edholm usually says that the government is making the largest investment in schools in 30 years, but that is not true. We have had this investigated and concluded that the appropriations for children's and youth education actually decrease by 2 billion. It is the largest cut to schools since 2007.
This is also relevant in this debate, because when you lay off qualified teachers and cut support for our children and young people in school, grade inflation will also increase. Then we leave our children and students behind.
No - this is the wrong policy and the wrong path to take. I urge the government and School Minister Lotta Edholm to take the issue with the seriousness it deserves.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! We are now going to make major changes in the areas of grading and independent schools. I have already accounted for this. And I am completely convinced that further investigations will affect this eventually. I have tried to account for this from the speaker's chair.
The absolute largest savings are currently being carried out in Social Democrat-governed Stockholm and Gothenburg. Stockholm has a tax chest of 83 billion kronor and a turnover every year of 50 billion - but cannot produce 200 million. Calculate the percentage on that. This is due to Social Democratic lack of interest in the school. It has been exactly like this in Stockholm. The teachers and principals who have worked in the city of Stockholm for a number of years know that it is so. The Social Democrats go to the election on the promise that there shall be two teachers in every classroom, and then they make million-savings in Sweden's absolute richest municipality.
The school is municipalized, and it is the Social Democrats' responsibility. The Social Democrats did that 30 years ago, and it was a wrong decision.
We will now appoint an investigation into a national school funding standard, meaning that the municipalities cannot fall below the standard for how much money is actually invested in the school. I believe that it will have great significance, not least in social democratically governed municipalities.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.