Response to interpellation 2022/23:42 on the centralization of teacher education
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 centralization of teacher education and its quality. L wants to improve the quality of the education through a reformed content with a focus on subject knowledge, cognitive science, and practical methodology 1. L also wants to facilitate the transition to the teaching profession for people with other academic backgrounds 1. L argues that the teacher shortage has decreased due to fewer children being born and that the fear regarding quality is exaggerated 2. S emphasizes the importance of teacher education being available throughout the country to meet the demand for skills. S argues that the government is reducing the number of training places 3 4 and wants to increase the throughput 4. S argues that the government has improved teachers' employment conditions 3.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! He has asked if I intend to take any initiatives that mean the teacher education will not remain at institutions such as Jönköping, Halmstad, Borås, Eskilstuna, Gävle and Luleå. He has also asked me how I and the government intend to solve the future teacher need in our entire country and all the country's schools. Niklas Sigvardsson has also asked how I and the government intend to work to strengthen the quality within the teacher education.
Initially, I want to say that I share Niklas Sigvardsson's view that teacher education is one of the absolutely most important educations in our country. Here, the people who are to teach Sweden's future, our children and students, are shaped and educated. We must therefore have an attractive teacher education that maintains high quality.
In order to raise Swedish school results and the status of the teaching profession, the Sverigedemokraterna, Moderaterna, Kristdemokraterna and Liberalerna have agreed to initiate work to develop teacher education. We will work to improve quality through a reformed educational content with more focus on subject knowledge, cognitive science and practical methodology. We will also work to ensure that people with a different academic background can transition to the teaching profession. This is important to solve the future teacher need.
The subject teacher education has long suffered from high dropout rates. Even though the throughput has increased in recent years, it is only just over 40 percent of those who start the education who graduate. More and more people are studying to become subject teachers via the complementary pedagogical education, KPU, which has a higher throughput. This is positive, but the throughput must also become higher in the subject teacher education. In the work of developing the teacher education, we will therefore specifically look at the organization and quality within the subject teacher education.
Mr. Speaker! The Government has recently taken office. We will return with how we wish to develop the teacher education, including the question of the localization of subject teacher education.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that the government will work to ensure that all children and pupils meet educated and qualified preschool teachers and teachers, regardless of school form and where in the country one lives.
Niklas Sigvardsson (S)
Mr. Speaker! I would like to begin by thanking the Minister for Education for the answer to my questions, even though I note that some of the answers are anything but clear.
In recent years, we have repeatedly read that there is a shortage of teachers across our country. According to trade unions, there is a shortage of approximately 22,500 primary school teachers. Within the upper secondary school, it is stated that approximately 15 percent of the teachers are unqualified.
Every day, fantastically skilled teachers are trained at educational institutions all over our country, from Malmö in the south to Luleå in the north. It is extremely important that this training exists in our entire country, because it is about being able to meet the competence supply in the entire education sector and obtaining competent and professionally skilled teachers.
The recruitment freeze at Raketskolan in Kiruna, which we have read about, clearly shows that we need more teachers in our entire country. To then consider which educational institutions should eventually be allowed to train these teachers and whether we should perhaps centralize teacher training will not make it any easier for schools like Raketskolan to recruit new teachers. To give the answer that one has just taken office and will return with an answer is anything but good.
Mr. Speaker! As recently as yesterday, I had the privilege of visiting one of the 27 institutions around our country that train teachers, in Jönköping. There, they devote great commitment every day to training future teachers, everything from preschool teachers to subject teachers in upper secondary school. They have worked hard to increase the quality of their education in recent years, which UKÄ gladly confirms they have done.
The feedback from this educational institution was great concern about what will happen in the future. Will the education not be allowed to remain despite their solid work in recent years to increase the quality?
The teacher education will, according to the Tidö Agreement, or the Slotts Agreement, be "concentrated at the highest-ranked institutions within each respective area." The uncertainty among the institutions regarding what this means is great. They wonder which ranking the government will base this on, as they hardly know if any such ranking exists. If a ranking needs to be established, how does one intend to do that in that case?
Being this vague and non-specific unfortunately only leads to anxiety and uncertainty among various educational institutions now as they are developing long-term strategies. Does one dare to enter into long-term letters of intent with governing bodies regarding competence supply? Does one dare to enter into new forms of cooperation? Does one dare to invest in better learning environments and innovative solutions to raise the quality even further in the coming years?
I intend once again to give the Minister of Education the opportunity to answer the question I posed in my interpellation. Does the Minister have any intention of taking any initiatives that mean that the subject teacher training will no longer exist at institutions such as Jönköping, Halmstad, Borås, Eskilstuna, Gävle and Luleå?
Linus Sköld (S)
Mr. Speaker! I thank you for the opportunity to discuss an incredibly important issue for our entire long country. I represent, despite my Scanian roots, the constituency that lies furthest north in the country - the same constituency in which Kiruna and Gällivare are located.
In northern Sweden, we currently have very low unemployment, especially in these two municipalities, because we have an expansive industry. This means that the welfare sector has an incredibly difficult time providing skilled labor for its operations. Even the industry says that the availability of trained labor is one of the biggest obstacles to growth. The green transition means that it is here that the great growth potential in our country currently lies. The availability of educational places, which I know will be addressed in a later interpellation debate, is therefore a fundamental factor for us to be able to continue the green transition and provide skilled labor for both industry and welfare.
At the same time, a societal transformation is taking place in these two municipalities. If one were to somehow succeed in recruiting a teacher from outside, it is incredibly difficult to find a residence for them, because the housing being built in Kiruna and Gällivare is built to replace parts of the towns that are sinking into the ground due to the mine shafts. The government does not deny this either, but is withdrawing the possibility of investment support, which will lower the construction rate and complicate the housing supply.
Furthermore, we can already see that the teacher shortage in Kiruna has reached the ultimate consequence: the safety stop that Niklas Sigvardsson spoke about just now. It occurred in September when the safety representative stopped the operations. An action plan was drawn up, and it has been worked on until a couple of weeks ago, when the chairman of Lärarförbundet was on a visit to inform himself on how things were going. It turned out then that they have had high staff turnover continuing onwards. The principal who drew up the action program has resigned. Johanna Jaara Åstrand then demanded a Norrland package for teacher supply to address the shortage where it is most acute. To this can be added that both chairpersons of the teachers' unions at the safety stop said that up to 200 schools risk meeting the same fate.
If you look at where Kiruna is located on the map, you can see that it is 35 mil to the nearest teacher training college, which is located in Luleå. The concern when it was stipulated in the Tidö Agreement that teacher training should be centralized became enormous. To the next teacher training college, there are indeed an additional 25 mil; it is located in Umeå.
When the Minister for Education threatens to shut down subject teacher training programs - I think that is how both the sector and the industry view the wording in the Tidö Agreement - the concern is therefore enormous. The teacher shortage in Malmfälten is acute. So my question is roughly the same as Niklas Sigvardsson's but more specific: Can the Minister guarantee that he does not intend to take any active measures to shut down the teacher training in Luleå?
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Thanks to the interpellor and to Linus Sköld for your contributions! It is a very large task that the government has ahead of it. We have big problems in the Swedish school system. One is that our children learn too little and that the quality of our teacher training is too low. There is also a problem in that we as a country have difficulty recruiting teacher students who manage or complete the entire education. Just as I pointed out in my interpellation response, it is not even half of the students who begin a subject teacher education who complete the entire education. It is clear that this is a very big problem for all of us parents who want our children to receive a good education and be able to feel safe in school.
Mr. Speaker! I feel a very great humility before these problems. In recent years, politics has failed in this area. A very great responsibility rests on the former Social Democratic government for not having addressed the problems during a period of eight years. They are now landing in the new government's lap.
We have received a strong mandate for change from the voters. The voters feel that Sweden is developing in the wrong direction and voted in early September for a new government and for change. That change is now coming.
I look forward to doing this together and in broad dialogue with both trade unions and various stakeholders in the school world, preferably also together with Social Democratic politicians who pragmatically and constructively want to contribute to making the Swedish school better. But that things should just be exactly as they have been previously does not work - I believe we all agree on that - because the problems are as large as they are.
I would particularly like to highlight the initiatives now being taken in the budget when it concerns, for example, strengthening the content of teacher education, such as that which is called practice schools, where students' opportunities to participate and practice their education in reality and towards pupils are increased in a good way. This also naturally applies to the changes that are now being signaled regarding the content of teacher education, with an increased focus on cognitive science, that is, on learning and how it can vary from person to person. In this way, different perspectives are combined in an order so that our children and pupils learn as much as they possibly can.
Mr. Speaker! I welcome these interpellations. The government has a very large task when it comes to tackling the major problems that Sweden has, after the last eight years have been characterized by great passivity. I regret it, but I hope that we can find a common path forward and in a constructive spirit discuss these issues together. I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on this and in working in a good tone moving forward.
Niklas Sigvardsson (S)
Mr. Speaker! The Minister for Education claims that the Social Democratic-led government has done nothing. Part of what the government is now presenting is, in fact, a continuation of the initiatives that the Social Democratic government put forward. This concerns, for example, the importance of KPU, that is, complementary pedagogical education. It is pleasing that we continue to work actively with it. It looks as if they will continue with national professional programs for principals, teachers, and preschool teachers, which will also strengthen both existing and new teachers. Investments are being made in more teacher-led hours within teacher education and much more.
When it comes to the question of quality, the Minister of Education and I agree on much. We also want to invest in good quality. We must also be able to trust that the authorities appointed to review and evaluate the quality of our teacher training actually do so. It is UKÄ that reviews this.
During 2021, a total of 44 follow-up reviews of UKÄ were conducted, where teacher training programs in previous reviews had been given insufficient or questioned quality. Of these 44 programs, 39 had moved from insufficient to high quality. In three cases, the program had been discontinued, and in two cases, the license to grant degrees had been revoked.
This shows that UKÄ's task actually works. Education programs that are of too low quality do not remain. This is what we both want, as I perceive the Minister for Education: that we should have well-functioning teacher education programs with good quality.
As the Minister for Education continued to answer evasively regarding whether teacher training programs across our country should remain, I thought I would take the opportunity to briefly describe the value of all the training programs across our country and that we actually have 27 higher education institutions that train teachers.
In an analysis that UKÄ has conducted, the significance of educations across our country is described. It is seen that programs such as the teacher and nursing programs recruit regionally, i.e., near the educational site, far more than other programs, and also succeed in retaining the students to a much higher extent than many other programs. This means that one fulfills what is desired from a higher education institution: one both trains the professional group that the welfare system needs so much with high quality, and one gets those who have been trained to stay in the local area and in neighboring municipalities. This is very positive, especially for areas such as those that Linus Sköld spoke about – Malmfälten, Gällivare, and Kiruna – but also for all other parts of our country, for example, more sparsely populated municipalities in southern Sweden.
I will continue to give the Minister for Education the opportunity to answer the question and reassure the higher education institutions that are wondering how they should plan their operations moving forward. Will the Minister take any initiatives that mean that the subject teacher training will not remain at institutions such as Jönköping, Halmstad, Borås, Eskilstuna, Gävle and Luleå?
Linus Sköld (S)
Mr. Speaker! The Minister says that the government has failed in recent years. One can look at the estimated number of missing teachers and see that, nationally, it is a significantly smaller number than it was a few years ago. It is, therefore, a truth with qualifications.
Niklas Sigvardsson gave a productive account of what the Social Democratic-led government has done. It has included things such as expanding the number of places in supplementary pedagogical education and initiating trials with shorter KPU. There have also been investments in teachers' employment conditions – wages, relief competence, and so on. Furthermore, this has been done together with the education minister's own party. It has been about improving the conditions so that we get more applicants to the teacher training.
That the government has been passive over the last eight years is an incorrect description, quite simply. Now it is Mats Persson who has the responsibility, and it is Mats Persson's government that is proposing to centralize teacher education, which leads to a concern as to whether teacher education will be allowed to remain out in the country or if it will only be at the old, venerable universities. It is this image that is spreading.
Mats Persson's government is reducing the number of educational places. It is Mats Persson's government that is withdrawing the investment support and worsening the housing supply in Malmfälten. Now it is Mats Persson who has the responsibility, and it is the proposals that Mats Persson's government has submitted or stated that we are debating here today.
I thought my question was very concrete and simple: Can Mats Persson guarantee that he does not intend to take any active measures to shut down the teacher training in Luleå?
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, my fellow members, for the questions, and thank you for the discussion!
It is true that the teacher shortage has decreased slightly. Unfortunately, that is because fewer children are being born in Sweden today than the forecast was for a few years ago. That is, so to speak, not due to the education system's ability or success, but it is because we are having too few children in Sweden right now. I would have liked to see that the teacher shortage was smaller and that it was because we had trained more teachers with better competence and that we had had greater throughput, but that is not the case today.
I also note that the Social Democrats in their shadow budget do not take into account the investment support either. But with that said, I intended to focus forward and consider what we can do together to improve Swedish teacher education. Nothing is more important for our children than to meet teachers with good subject knowledge, who know how to teach and have the right pedagogical knowledge. It is a huge problem today that so many start teacher education, especially the subject teacher education, without completing it. Not even every other student who starts the subject teacher education goes through it without dropping out.
This is a long-term problem for our country. It is why there is a teacher shortage. It is why there is poor quality in the classrooms. It means that our children and young people do not receive the education they deserve. That is the consequence.
Mr. Speaker! It is very important that the policy in this situation focuses on improving the content of the teacher education so that as a student teacher, one gains more knowledge on how to teach, a better ability to meet the student in the classroom, and that one has sufficient subject knowledge. It should not be the case that students in a secondary school feel that the teacher does not know their subject or that the teacher cannot count. As a student, one should be met by a teacher who knows their stuff, has solid subject teacher competence, and also an ability to convey that competence to our children and youth, so that they learn sufficiently.
A desired situation is a better quality in teacher education, a higher application pressure, and that more teacher students go through the education, emerge as teachers, and can educate our children and youth. It is our desired situation, and to get there, the teacher education needs to change. There needs to be more focus on learning. Cognitive science plays an important role, and it is a matter of working to raise the status of the teaching profession. A change of the subject teacher education is an important part of this.
I believe that much of this can be done in broad political agreement here in the Riksdag. I hope so, and I welcome it if it is possible. I think it would be good for Sweden if one could do this in consensus and not have great political conflict. This is such an important future issue for our country that it deserves the best of politics.
Niklas Sigvardsson (S)
Mr. Speaker! Initially, I want to say that we Social Democrats, of course, also want an even better teacher education. We want to increase the throughput, that more students should graduate and that we should get more qualified teachers in all the country's classrooms. It is clear that we want to continue to work for this, so that we all reach the goal of qualified teachers in all classrooms.
But one of the important and central issues for all children and students to be able to have a qualified, competent and skilled teacher in every classroom is the localization of teacher education. The Minister avoids that question time and again. It must mean that it is very uncertain within the government and its coalition partner Sverigedemokraterna as to what should be done in this issue.
I would have wished that the Minister's announcement were clearer today so that all teacher educators across our country could celebrate Christmas in the calm knowledge that their teacher education will remain. It is about the work they are actively putting in and all the applications they are currently submitting to UKÄ to be allowed to provide high-quality teacher education becoming a reality in the coming year and in the future. It is a harsh Christmas present that the Minister for Education is giving to the country's higher education institutions.
I give the minister one last chance to, despite everything, answer the question I have asked throughout this entire debate: Will the minister take any initiatives so that there is no subject teacher training left at institutions such as Jönköping, Halmstad, Borås, Eskilstuna or Gävle? It is a question of competence supply of teachers in our entire country.
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Thanks to my fellow debaters for a very good interpellation debate! I welcome it. I believe we have the conditions to together in the Riksdag do what we can to improve this area. It is overdue, and reforms are needed here. As I have said before: The broader anchoring we can achieve regarding this, the better.
The interpellator may be somewhat overstating the fear. What we on the government side have said and say is that we have great ambitions when it comes to improving teacher education, not least the subject teacher education. No one in our elongated country will need to be worried that this will occur at the expense of quality or at the expense of the students' instruction in the classroom. On the contrary, the reforms we are now making will ensure that there is more focus on knowledge. We will ensure that our children learn more. We will reform teacher education so that it receives content with a strong focus on learning and cognitive science. There shall be a clear connection between the execution in the classroom and the education one undergoes.
No one needs to be worried in this situation. We are working slowly. We are working carefully to ensure that this reform becomes as good as possible. We do this to ensure that students, teachers, and parents feel secure in the changes that we will implement. We will focus very much on the content of the education. It is a focus on cognitive science and on high quality, so that we achieve a higher throughput. It is not acceptable that more than half of those who begin the subject teacher training drop out. Our country can do better. Our country deserves better.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.