Response to interpellation 2022/23:396 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 equivalence in schools. L considers it of the utmost importance that grades are accurate and reflect individuals' knowledge levels 1. L argues that there are problems with the system's construction and that both municipal and independent schools have problems with equivalence 1 2. L thinks it is good that Vänsterpartiet is engaged because grades are an important exercise of authority 3. L considers that national tests are important and that the government should implement measures for the independent school sector 4. V considers that the market school is the root of the problem and that the only way to solve the situation is to abolish the market school system 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.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Mr. Speaker! Daniel Riazat has asked me what I intend to do to address grade inflation.
I want to begin by agreeing with the interpellator that it is of the utmost importance that the grades awarded can be trusted. In Sweden, grades are used both when applying for work and for admission to and selection for education. That the grades are representative and reflect an individual's level of knowledge is of great importance both for the individual, for society, and for the outside world. Both teachers and principals have a responsibility to ensure that grades are awarded in accordance with the regulations. Grading constitutes the exercise of public authority, and ultimately, each school principal is responsible for ensuring that the Education Act (2010:800) and other regulations are followed.
There are today major problems with how the system is constructed and how it functions in practice. This has been demonstrated in several reports, including in Skolverket's analyses of grading in primary and upper secondary school and in Skolinspektionen's quality reviews.
An explanation for the lack of equivalence is, according to Skolverket, the difficulty for teachers at different schools to find a consensus in assessment. According to the agency, a systemic change is necessary. The need to review the grading system is also raised by Riksrevisionen, which, in its audit of the state's efforts for equivalence in grading, recommended that the government investigate how grading can become more equivalent.
Several pieces of information have also emerged regarding pressure on grading teachers regarding so-called "joy grades" or "cheating grades," as I prefer to call them. From the research report Results and Grading in Independent High Schools (SNS Analys 88, 2022), it appears that independent schools have a more generous grading than municipal ones. Grade inflation is, however, a problem among both private and public principals.
Regarding the grading system, the government has already taken several measures during this mandate period. Both Skolverket and Statens skolinspektion have received assignments in their regulatory letters aimed at promoting more equitable grading.
On June 22 this year, the government also appointed an inquiry to analyze and propose changes to the grading system and the system for merit evaluation. The inquiry shall, among other things, analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the system for grading and merit evaluation in the Swedish school system in relation to other countries' systems and submit proposals for changes. The proposals shall aim for grades and merit values from primary school and upper secondary school to more accurately reflect students' subject knowledge, as well as to counteract grade inflation.
Incorrect grades affect both the student and society at large, and it is obvious that changes are required in our system. It is, however, important that it is first properly investigated.
When it comes to independent schools, the government gave the Investigation on Profit in Schools (U 2022:08) a comprehensive supplementary directive on July 7 this year, which aims to increase the quality of the operations. There shall be no room for unserious and unsuitable actors.
I look forward to concrete proposals to take forward from both of these investigations. Systematic discrepancies in grades and pressure on teachers to give higher grades must not occur. It must be possible to trust the grades. They must reflect the student's level of knowledge in a representative way, regardless of which school the student attended or which teacher gave the grade.
Daniel Riazat (V)
Mr. Speaker! Thanks to the Minister for Education for the answer to this question!
Sweden has an extreme education system. As the only country in the world, we have free choice of the tax funds that are to go towards children's education and care. This system, whose logic is a market logic, puts school corporations' right to profits before the right to knowledge and education.
The market-oriented school has led to many things. It has led to segregation. It has led to inequality being exacerbated in our society. It has led to children not receiving the knowledge and education they are entitled to. It has also led to the fact that we can no longer trust the grading system we have. The privatization experiment that the market school entails has destroyed opportunities for thousands of children and worsened the working conditions for various occupational categories in preschool and school.
In recent times, the issue of fake grades has been discussed both in the media and among those working within the education system. Grading is the exercise of public authority. Regardless of the view on grades – I know we disagree there – it is of the utmost importance that one can trust the exercise of public authority. But unfortunately, grades have become a marketing tool for schools to attract students. It is primarily profit-driven private schools that stand out.
Vänsterpartiet does not see more national tests or other misleading and – excuse the language! – empty proposals as solutions to this issue. Even though the reasons for grade inflation are many, the root of the problem, that is, the market school, must be addressed. The only way to rectify the situation is to abolish the market school system.
One measure that can be taken is, for example, to ensure that the school fee can only be used for school activities and not for waffle stands and grocery stores, which some independent schools have used it for.
During the spring, among others, the principal of Handelshögskolan has pointed out that it has gone so far that they can no longer rely on the grades from a large number of schools whose students apply to this college. The students do not possess the knowledge that the grades indicate. This distorts the competition and pushes out students from other schools who have received grades that actually correspond to their knowledge.
Then we must nevertheless remember that the Stockholm School of Economics is and always has been a part of the right's alibi when it comes to higher education and research. When they even say that there is something wrong with the system, one can wonder why the government is not doing anything.
In view of this, I submitted a question to the Minister for Education with the heading: Fake grades. The question read: What does the Minister intend to do to address grade inflation?
I have received an answer here that I believe is not sufficient at all. I am the member who has served the longest in the Committee on Education and can say that it is not the first time I have disagreed with a minister regarding school issues. But the ministers in this government must still be special experts on the type of empty answers that the Minister for Education has provided.
So I ask again: What does the Minister for Education and the government intend to do to address grade inflation? And why does the Minister for Education not want to admit that the market school is actually the main problem when it comes to this issue?
Regarding the school systems of other countries, which the Minister for Education spoke about, I just want to comment that it is quite clear; they do not have market schools. We are the only country in the world that has it.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Mr. Speaker! Yes, what is the government doing about the problem that exists with grading that is not equivalent and with the fact that we see cheated grades?
Approximately 40 percent in grade 9 receive a higher grade in mathematics than they have performed on the national test. At the same time, many higher authorities now testify that the mathematics results may rather be falling. Handelshögskolan is one of the universities in Sweden that testifies to this. I think perhaps that Daniel Riazat's attack on Handelshögskolan is a bit dull. It is one of the world's leading universities in its field. Precisely because of that, one must take this seriously.
What is the government doing then? For example, digitized national tests will be introduced gradually. This is a prerequisite for achieving central grading of national tests. It is not only incorrect grading that is a problem in Sweden. There are also problems with the grading of the national tests. If the national tests are to have a greater impact on the grading, it is important that they are more accurate.
The Swedish Schools Inspectorate shall, until 2024, focus on reviewing the grading from its auditing perspective.
Furthermore, Skolverket was tasked this past winter to develop regulations on how to handle grading within the framework of the systematic quality work. I believe it is important that schools see grading as an important part of their work and that one truly understands in depth that grading is precisely the exercise of authority and nothing that one can be careless with.
Last but not least, we have the two investigations that the government has commissioned and given additional directives to. This concerns the large grading investigation, which is led by Professor Magnus Henrekson, and the additional directives to the free school investigation, which handles some of the questions that Daniel Riazat raises.
Daniel Riazat is completely right that there is a greater problem with unfair grading in the independent schools than in the municipal schools. But there are also major problems in the municipal school. I know that, as a former school board member in Stockholm. We conducted a large mathematics test to test and see how well the grades in mathematics in grade 9 matched the results of the national tests and with the test we conducted. Then we saw that there were major problems in both municipal and independent schools.
Daniel Riazat (V)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the Minister for Education for the detailed answer.
In other countries, people think that they should build up a system that works as well as possible at the foundation in order to avoid having too many inspections, costs for inspections, and authorities.
In Sweden, it seems to be exactly the opposite. We think: Let us build a broken system. Then we can acquire authorities to ensure that this is followed up, and we give them additional directives and appoint investigations every parliamentary term on how it should be solved. But we do not solve the problem ourselves that we have created an incorrect system. We only ensure that every year we state what the problem is without doing anything about it.
That is not really how it works in leading countries, for example Scotland, Finland, Canada or other countries that I know the government looks up to politically in many ways. It does not work that way in any of those countries.
There has been no lack of grade investigations, free school investigations, or investigations into why the market school has destroyed the Swedish school system. There is evidence. The research says that it is that way. Even Svenskt Näringsliv's own research body says so. And Svenskt Näringsliv's and the right's own university says that it is a systemic error that must be addressed.
But what does the research actually say, if we are to delve a bit deeper into this? It says that students who have attended profit-driven independent schools receive higher final grades compared to their grades on the national tests. But it also says that they have received higher grades on the national tests than corresponding students at municipal schools have received. Higher grades are also given on the national tests. The gap is therefore actually even larger than what we can see from the available figures.
The research says, as mentioned, that students who have attended profit-driven independent schools receive higher final grades but perform worse at colleges and universities. That is what Skolverket says, and that is what Stockholm University says. It is not something the left has made up or that needs to be investigated. That is how it looks.
What more can one say? It is said that unqualified teachers tend to give higher grades than they actually should. Which schools in the country have the most unqualified teachers? It happens to be the profit-driven friskolor that have the most unqualified teachers.
Furthermore, it is said that there is an incentive for higher grades. We know of teachers who have been fired from independent school corporations because they refused to raise the grades of students who had not earned higher grades but who had influential parents who contacted the principal and said they would change schools if the grades were not raised. That situation did not arise before the independent school system and the market system were established in Sweden. But today, we have it.
The answer I get from the Minister for Education and the government is that they will look into the grading of national tests and at digitalization. No one is against the digitalization of national tests. All parties are in favor of it. No one is against central grading of different types of tests. All parties are in favor of it. Let us focus on the main issues.
I understand that the Minister for Education and the government want to dodge answering the real problems with the market school. We have a situation in Sweden that means that in the future we may perhaps have professional groups with a large proportion of people who do not have the competence that is on paper for the professions they work in. It is a danger for Sweden and Swedish democracy.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Mr. Speaker! Daniel Riazat seems to think it is a problem that no one is against the solutions being proposed. I think rather that it is a strength. It is quite excellent that many parties in the Swedish Riksdag see grade inflation as a major problem and that there is also a certain consensus on what can be done about it. It would be a bigger problem if we were completely in disagreement on this.
Just as I said in a previous post, the grading is more unfair in independent schools than it is in the municipal ones. And just as Daniel Riazat says, one explanation for this is that there is a higher proportion of unqualified teachers in these schools. Therefore, the additional directives to the investigation on the independent school sector are very important also from this perspective. One should not be able to run independent schools with a profit interest if one does not simultaneously have a high quality of operation.
One problem is, naturally, that a totally incorrect grading is a sign that one has poor quality and poor follow-up and that one probably has too high a proportion of unqualified teachers. But all these measures are important, not just individually.
I think it is primarily a strength that the parties in this assembly consider that we should have, for example, central correction of national tests, that national tests should be a large and important part of the grading, and that we should have an equivalent grading.
Vänsterpartiet is not the primary advocate for grades at all, so I think it is incredibly good that Vänsterpartiet is engaged in the issue and does not just say "Well, we shouldn't have grades, and therefore it doesn't matter." The grading is extremely important. It is the exercise of authority. It is important that it is done in a proper way, and that is why the government has appointed these inquiries.
Daniel Riazat (V)
Mr. Speaker! Let me begin by going through the issue of national tests so that we can get it out of the way.
National tests exist in a few subjects and actually provide no reflection of how things are going in the Swedish school. They are a measure for certain subjects in which we have national tests. There, we can compare the final grades with the national test.
But what happens, for example, with the subject of music? There are independent schools that do not even have a music room. Yet, the students receive higher grades in singing and music than students in Adolf Fredrik's music classes do. What happens when there are horse high schools where one receives higher grades in the school's specific subjects, despite there not being a single horse at the school, than what students receive who actually attend schools where such opportunities are offered? This is something we cannot control through national tests.
That is why it is not relevant to continue talking about the national tests that the Minister for Education conducts. That was what I described in my first speech. This is misleading and empty talk.
What we need to talk about is that we have a school system that rewards those schools that give grades that are too high. We have a system that allows anyone to open a school here in the country. It could be any bank from Qatar, Moldova, or Liechtenstein that can open a school here, give grades that are too high, and get away with it.
At the same time, we have a Minister for Education who comes from this school world themselves and who refuses to tackle the problem with fake grades. But we will all have to face the consequences of it in our society moving forward when healthcare has staff with grades they actually shouldn't have received, or when schools have teachers who do not have the competence that is said they have. This puts our society to the test.
The government must act urgently and abolish the market school system to address the problem.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Mr. Speaker! It was unfortunate that Daniel Riazat distanced himself from the national tests and the significance that at least I believe they have.
One can of course not say that the national tests speak to how the Swedish school is doing. On the other hand, they hopefully reflect the knowledge of the students who take national tests in certain subjects. It is important that these results are also reflected in the grading. How this can be achieved is what the grading inquiry shall look into, among other things.
Just as I have said now in several posts, it is also about the independent school sector. That is why we have submitted additional directives to the independent school inquiry. One should no longer be able to take out profit when the school is newly started. One should also not be able to do so if one has orders from the School Inspectorate. Furthermore, one should not be able to take out profit if one receives state grants for quality-enhancing measures and so on. We shall enable compulsory management of schools that are poor. Today, this possibility only exists when it concerns municipal schools, but we want that even poor independent schools should be able to be subject to compulsory management.
A good deal of what Daniel Riazat is calling for in the independent school sector will, therefore, be implemented by the government. But it is also important to realize that incorrect grading is not a problem only in the independent school sector, but it is also a problem among the municipal schools. Therefore, we must take a holistic approach to grading. As mentioned, we have appointed an inquiry, and I look forward to eventually being able to review its results.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.