Response to interpellation 2023/24:429 on support for accommodation for upper secondary school 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 how support for students in upper secondary school who are called up for military service should be designed to become more equitable and strengthen its leveling capacity. S considers the support deeply problematic because it varies depending on school and municipality, and that the state support has not been indexed for 30 years 1. S argues that the government is doing nothing to rectify this 1 and criticizes the minister for not taking responsibility 2. L argues that the mobilization support fulfills an important function 3 4 5. L argues that the issue is complex 4 5 and that the previous government chose not to proceed with the investigation proposals due to cost increases 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.
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Linus Sköld has asked me how I intend to act so that the accommodation grants will become more equitable and to strengthen the grants' equalizing capacity.
Students in upper secondary school can, under certain conditions, receive support for boarding. The responsibility for this support is currently divided between the municipalities and the state, and the supports are governed by different regulatory frameworks depending on whether a student attends a municipal or an independent school. The investigation on the planning and dimensioning of komvux and upper secondary school had, among other tasks, to propose whether the state through CSN should have a unified responsibility for the support.
The investigation proposed in the report Joint Responsibility - a model for planning and dimensioning of upper secondary education (SOU 2020:33) that the municipalities' responsibility for support for boarding should be transferred to CSN, which would then receive the collective responsibility for the support for boarding. The investigation also submitted proposals on how the support for boarding should be designed to become simple, uniform, and predictable. Furthermore, it was proposed that the support should be provided with an amount that follows the cost development. The previous government did not proceed with the proposals.
The placement subsidies fulfill an important function because they, among other things, aim to remove geographical barriers to upper secondary education. I therefore intend to continue to follow the issue.
Linus Sköld (S)
Mr. Speaker! School in Sweden is free of charge and accessible to everyone, regardless of the parents' wallet, from preschool class all the way up to higher education. It is an incredible advantage for a welfare society to have it that way - that people, regardless of the family's economic situation, can educate themselves, improve themselves, grow and develop.
Being able to attend a high school education far from the parental home should also not be a class issue, or at least to the minimum extent possible. It could be about attending a national sports high school or a national sports education. It could be about applying to Rymdgymnasiet in Kiruna or just taking the agricultural program when it is not available in one's own municipality and one has to travel a bit to be able to attend there.
More equal opportunities to study far from the parental home should be worth striving for in a welfare society like ours. That is why there is accommodation support. Those who are to undertake a upper secondary education far from home have the possibility of receiving support for the accommodation, that is to say, help to cover housing, increased living expenses, and travel to the parental home.
The placement support is, as the Minister said in his answer, designed in different ways depending on which form of association the principal has for the education and which municipality one happens to have one's parental home in. It is deeply problematic that these things should determine what conditions one has to attend an education far from the parental home.
Furthermore, the state support, that is, the support given to students who study in independent schools, is also not indexed, meaning it is not adjusted for inflation. It has not been for 30 years; it is at the same level now as in 1995. This means that if the payment of 1,650 kronor that students receive on average were to be indexed based on what it was worth in 1995, it would have needed to amount to an average of 2,672 kronor.
The lack of adjustment means that an ever smaller proportion receive coverage for their expenses. An ever smaller proportion of students can afford to request upper secondary education that is far from their home location, at least if they are at independent schools. The municipal support is adjusted, I want to be clear, but choosing independent schools is reserved for those who have parents with the financial capacity to compensate for the adjustment that has been missing for 30 years.
This is the background as to why I have asked the minister what he intends to do so that the support will become more equitable and to level the differences in students' opportunities to request education far from the parental home. I hear the minister answer that he does not intend to do anything about this. He says that he will follow the issue, but it is "government talk" to not do anything.
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Linus Sköld, for your interpellation!
It concerns an investigation that the previous Social Democratic government commissioned and which was submitted in 2020. During the years that the Social Democrats were in power, nothing happened regarding the issue, and I am therefore curious about what considerations the Social Democratic government made when they chose not to proceed with the investigation's proposals.
Linus Sköld (S)
Mr. Speaker! It is now Mats Persson who is the responsible minister at the Ministry of Education and who should be the one to answer my question, namely what he intends to do to rectify the problems that I have outlined regarding the detention allowances.
Those who want an in-depth course in government prose can note that Mats Persson is trying to shift the responsibility away from the Social Democratic government. He states that the investigation has been conducted and that the Social Democratic government did not proceed with the proposals.
If he intended to consider and do something about the problem, he would have answered that the proposals are being prepared within the Government Offices, but that is not what he answers. He answers that he will follow up on the question. This means that he regards the proposals in the investigation that lies finished on his desk as totally dead. He has thrown the investigation in the wastebasket.
The Social Democratic government was fully satisfied with proceeding with parts of the proposals that were in the investigation, and Mats Persson knows this very well. It is an incredibly extensive investigation, and the parts that concerned the dimensioning and planning of upper secondary education were the ones that eventually became a government bill that Mats Persson was involved in and voted against in this Riksdag.
I thank the minister for the type of opposition politics he engages in. I think he should step up and take his responsibility as minister and explain if he thinks this is an unimportant issue. Is it the case that he does not intend to do anything to address the disparity in the support and the depreciation that occurs over time?
If he does not think it is an important principle that people, regardless of their parents' economic situation, should be able to pursue a high school education far from home, it is better that he says so than that he tries to send the question back to me.
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Linus Sköld, for your contribution!
I think it is important to be sincere. This issue has been handled by the previous government, and my sincere question was what considerations the previous government made at that time. I want to gain an understanding of what advantages and disadvantages the previous government saw with the proposal. Reasonably, the disadvantages must have outweighed the advantages since it was chosen not to proceed with the proposal. This is information that both I and the government would find interesting in order to gain an increased understanding of how to think and what advantages and disadvantages there are with the proposal.
Mr. Speaker! Then I believe it is important that we are completely honest with each other in this debate: It is not the case that the Social Democrats stand for the good in society and the government for the evil. Naturally, we, I believe, both from the government's side and from the Social Democrats' side, think that the boarding school grants fulfill an important function, not least to be able to move to an education far away from where the parents or one oneself lives, and that this type of support is very important.
Naturally, it is also a complex matter because there are different systems, different types of educations, and different types of actors, both state and municipal, involved. It is therefore not a simple question. It was also in light of this that I asked my question about what considerations the previous government made. I think it would be interesting to hear in order to gain an increased understanding of what arguments for and against the proposal existed at that time.
Linus Sköld (S)
Mr. Speaker! Mats Persson has now waived six minutes of speaking time that he could have spent clarifying this complex issue if he really wanted to. Instead, he thinks that the Social Democrats should handle the government's policy development.
I requested Mats Persson's view regarding the accommodation subsidies. Does he think they should be more equal? Does he think that the leveling effect that the subsidies have the potential to have needs to be strengthened? What does he intend to do in that direction, if so?
Whatever proposals this government wants to put forward, Mats Persson must be responsible for. I cannot do that, unless Mats Persson wants to follow the proposals that I want him to put forward. It would have been a phenomenal arrangement if the opposition got to decide.
The government holds the initiative here. The government has completed investigation proposals. There is a preparatory basis. If one thinks that the investigation proposals are not sufficient, one has the investigative capacity to conduct a renewed investigation. That is done in other areas. For example, regarding mother tongue instruction, a very well-investigated issue, a completely new investigation has been commissioned quite recently. Selection to independent schools, also a well-investigated issue previously, a new investigation has also been commissioned on. There is a whole range of things where the government is not satisfied with the proposals that are on the table, and in those cases, a new investigation has been commissioned.
Can Mats Persson express his own opinion regarding the accommodation subsidies - whether they should be more equal, whether they should have a more equalizing capacity, and what he intends to do about it in that case? Or does he think it is good as it is?
Utbildningsministern Mats Persson (L)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you, Linus Sköld, for the interpellation! I think it has been a clarifying discussion to the extent that this is a difficult question. The fact that the Social Democrats commissioned an inquiry that proposed a model for this, but that the previous government then chose not to proceed with the proposal, shows that this is not straightforward. Had it been simple to implement, I guess that Linus Sköld, with the commitment that the member displays, would have convinced his party to prioritize and do this.
I suspect, Mr. Speaker, that a challenge for the previous government at that time was that the investigation's proposal involved a cost increase which, according to the proposal, would be financed by reducing the grants to the municipalities by a corresponding amount. I guess that the previous Social Democratic government in that situation made the assessment that they did not want to reduce the grants to the municipalities in order to increase the compensation for the boarding allowance. It is at least my reading and interpretation of the considerations that the previous government made, which is interesting and of course something that the government takes with it into the upcoming work.
It is important that one can study in the whole country. It is important that one can take courses that are not located in the place where one lives. The relocation support plays a very important role in that regard.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.