Response to interpellation 2023/24:434 on higher quality in preschools
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
1 L argues that the government is working for high and equal quality by reducing administrative burden, investing in further education, and strengthening the status of the professions 1. L emphasizes that profit must not occur at the expense of quality and that state grants have been strengthened to reach targets for the size of the children's groups 1. L believes that quality has dropped in some municipalities due to a decreased proportion of educated staff 2. L wants to tighten the intake for the preschool teacher education and change the childcare training programs 3. 4 S argues that the work environment is crucial for attracting students and that large children's groups create a poor physical work environment 4. 5 S points out that independent preschools have a lower proportion of educated staff and that profit extraction is a risk factor for quality 5. 6 S considers educated preschool teachers to be an important indicator of quality 6. 7 S argues that municipalities are affected by cuts due to inflation and war, which makes it impossible to reduce children's groups despite state grants 7. 8 S believes that the state must take greater responsibility through general investments to create equal conditions 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)
Mr. Speaker! Mats Wiking has asked me what I and the government will do to make preschool more equal throughout the country, as well as what I and the government will do to increase the proportion of qualified staff in preschool.
All children and students shall receive a good start in life. Conducting educational activities within the school system in Sweden means that one manages the society's trust for that mission. Preschool plays a very important role for children's all-round development and contributes to creating equal opportunities before the start of school.
There are several factors that affect the quality in preschool, for example the pedagogical leadership, the staff's education and opportunities for further education, the staff density as well as the size of the children's groups. The government's goal is a preschool of high and equal quality.
The single most important factor for better goal achievement in preschool is skilled preschool teachers who have sufficient time for their main task, teaching. In order to provide preschool teachers and teachers with a better working situation and better opportunity to carry out high-quality teaching, the government has therefore appointed the Inquiry on a reduced administrative burden for preschool teachers and teachers (U 2023:01), which shall conduct a broad review of how the administrative burdens can be reduced.
With competent and knowledgeable preschool teachers, the conditions for a high-quality preschool operation are increased and more pupils reach the goals for the education after they have completed preschool. The Government has therefore, among other things, allocated 50 million kronor annually in 2023 and 2024 for preschool teachers' and teachers' further education and estimated 50 million kronor for the purpose in 2025.
In order for the Swedish preschool to maintain high quality, it is crucial that the preschool teacher educations well prepare the students for future professional practice and that the individuals admitted to preschool teacher educations have good prerequisites to complete the education and become skilled preschool teachers. The Government has therefore appointed an inquiry to propose measures to develop the teacher and preschool teacher educations in order to raise the status and attractiveness of the educations and the professions (dir. 2023:111).
The Riksdag has decided, in accordance with the government's proposal in the bill National professional program for principals, teachers and preschool teachers (prop. 2022/23:54), that provisions shall be introduced in the Education Act regarding a national professional program for principals, teachers and preschool teachers within the school system. The purpose is to develop the quality of teaching, strengthen the professions, increase the attractiveness of the professions and thereby increase the equity in education. The provisions enter into force on 1 January 2025.
The Government further considers that unserious and unsuitable actors should not be allowed to appear within the school system. Therefore, we are now starting a complete renovation of the Swedish independent school system which shall clear away the unhealthy drivers but at the same time safeguard the freedom of choice. It shall not be possible to make money by reducing the quality, neither at independent schools nor for preschools.
All children and parents should be able to trust that individual operators who run independent preschools prioritize children's right to good education and care over the owners' profits. The Government has therefore decided on additional directives to the Investigation on Profit in Schools (U 2022:08). It is a package of various measures in response to all cases where children's and students' right to a good education is not met.
In addition to the measures I have already mentioned, I want to mention that the state grant for quality-enhancing measures in preschools has been strengthened by 800 million SEK for 2023 and 2024, and this year amounts to approximately 2.8 billion SEK. The state grant can, among other things, be used to strive for the children's groups to have a size that corresponds with Skolverket's guideline. The grant may also be used to retain or recruit staff in the preschool as well as for competence development for preschool teachers and other staff working within the preschool.
The government is therefore working in several different ways to create more equality and quality in preschool so that all children can develop their knowledge, skills and competencies as much as possible, regardless of which preschool the child attends or where in the country the child lives.
Mats Wiking (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thank you for the answer, Minister for Education! We seem to agree that skilled staff are needed within preschools.
It is good that one wants to raise the quality of the preschool teacher program, but I agree with the teachers' unions who say that it is very difficult to get more students to apply for teacher training programs if the employers do not ensure that it is an attractive, stimulating work environment. We have over a fairly long period lost thousands of preschool teachers who have changed careers, and fewer and fewer are studying to become preschool teachers. It is now so bad that so few preschool teachers are being trained in southern Sweden that Malmö alone would need all the newly graduated in the field.
To be able to increase the number of applicants to the preschool teacher program, it is not the content of the teacher education that is decisive. The change needs to be made out in the preschools. The staff need to have time to be educators, and the children have a right to skilled adults who see the children in their learning.
Mr. Speaker! In order for the staff to see and meet the child where they are in their development, it is required that the groups in the preschools are not too large. Skolverket established a national target in 2016, on the mandate of the then S-government, and a state grant was introduced to reduce the size of the children's groups. The target is set at 6-12 children in the age of one to three years and 9-15 children in the age of four to five years. The target shall be related to a number of factors such as the staff's education and competence, staff density, the children's groups' composition, as well as the preschool's physical work environment. Researchers were behind this proposal.
The S-led government also introduced a state grant with a specific goal to reduce the children's groups. The number of children in the children's groups also decreased slowly, but it is still not anywhere near the target.
Mr. Speaker! If one looks at Skolverket's statistics over a long period, one can see that the staffing density and the group size in Swedish preschools have actually been constant since 2005. On average, the staffing density has been at 5.3 children per full-time worker, and the group size has been at around 16.8 children. But there is great variation between preschools and municipalities. It can vary between fewer than 10 and more than 28 children per group.
In order to keep group sizes down and avoid an overly chaotic work environment, many preschools have divided the children's groups into smaller groups during parts of the day. But even if children are divided into smaller groups and there are larger premises, one cannot escape the fact that there are major challenges when it comes to the preschool's physical work environment. Both Kommunal and Sveriges Lärare clearly signal that regardless of how one describes it, large children's groups mean a physical work environment with noise and high sound levels.
Mr. Speaker! We can also see that fewer preschool teachers and childcare workers are seeking employment within the preschool. If we go back five to ten years, we can see that preschools with three staff members could have had two preschool teachers and one childcare worker. Today, there are preschools where preschool teachers are in the minority. In some municipalities, one is happy if one can get any at all with adequate education.
This obviously results in large quality differences between different preschools and municipalities. One can say that each municipality has the responsibility for the quality, but when the government's goal is that more children should attend preschool, a large responsibility also lies with the Swedish government.
My questions to the Minister for Education are: In what way will the changes in the preschool teacher education lead more people to apply for it? And is it reasonable to have such large differences between municipalities regarding access to trained educators? What does the Minister for Education intend to do about this imbalance?
Paula Örn (S)
Mr. Speaker! Thanks to Mats Wiking for an important interpellation and to the Minister for the answer!
It is a rather bright picture that the Minister paints of all the measures that are underway. But I intend to delve a little deeper into some areas where I feel concern about the development and whether the government's measures will truly meet the problem picture we see.
The Minister highlights the importance of skilled preschool teachers to achieve better goal attainment. I think that one can place an equals sign between goal attainment and quality, even though the concept of quality is difficult to measure when it comes to human-centric professions. We shall return to that.
We can, however, observe that qualified preschool teachers are an important indicator of quality. We can also observe that there is a significantly smaller proportion of qualified preschool teachers in the independent preschools. According to the latest open comparison for preschools, there are on average 30 percent preschool teachers in the independent preschools, while the same proportion for the municipal preschools is 43 percent.
Furthermore, in total, more than half of the staff in the independent preschools have so-called other or no education. This at least makes me worry about what quality can be maintained with such a small proportion of staff who are educated to work with children. I wonder if the minister shares my concern.
The shortage of qualified preschool teachers follows the same pattern as for qualified teachers in the independent schools. The operations whose purpose is to deliver profit to their owners seem to choose staff that cost less, for example, staff who do not have a university education to work with children. We see again how market logic affects an important quality aspect: the availability of qualified preschool teachers. It does not contribute to strengthened quality and equality in either the school or the preschool.
The Minister also points out in his answer that the government considers that there should not be unserious and unsuitable actors in preschool. It is an entirely obvious ambition that we all agree with. But we Social Democrats have long pointed out that Sweden's world-unique system with unlimited profits seems to attract just unserious and unsuitable actors.
In the area of preschools, we can mention the well-known example of the Torget preschool. There, children did not receive enough food, and staff were urged not to make reports of concern. It concerns a preschool with approved quality measurements whose owner, Tellusgruppen, took a total profit of 33 million kronor.
It seems to be difficult to ensure through quality audits that the incentives for the owner to make a profit do not, despite everything, create deficiencies in the operations. The measures that the government is now investigating – continued unlimited profit extraction, but with more quality control – will not be sufficient.
We Social Democrats already presented significantly more powerful measures during the previous parliamentary term to ensure that all tax money goes to the children in preschool instead of to profits. These proposed measures were unfortunately voted down in the chamber by the current government parties and their new friends in the Sverigedemokraterna.
Does the Minister for Education share my concern over how the low proportion of educated staff in the independent preschools affects the quality, and does the Minister see the pursuit of profit in itself as a major risk factor for lack of quality in the independent operations?
Rose-Marie Carlsson (S)
Mr. Speaker! Now I am going to do something I have never done before, namely have all the material digitally. I am used to having it on paper.
Quality in preschool - what does the head of the organization mean when talking about it? Skolverket and Skolinspektionen define quality in different ways, and guardians define quality in a completely different way.
What is quality? Skolverket says that it concerns the national requirements and goals that are linked to the curriculum and the assessment and development of the operation's quality from an equality perspective. So, one can measure quality, and that is also how quality is most often measured.
The Swedish Schools Inspectorate has conducted a review of how heads of schools and principals work with quality in teaching at preschools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. They are looking at recruitment, competence development, and children's attendance, which are extremely important aspects in socioeconomically weaker areas. If children cannot attend preschool, we cannot help them and give them the support they need.
In order for preschool to benefit children's social, cognitive and linguistic development, it is required that the preschool maintains high quality. One of the most important factors for achieving high quality is the staff's education and competence level. It is therefore particularly serious that the proportion of qualified preschool teachers has decreased in recent years. It can be clearly seen that it has decreased most in the areas where the children have a foreign background.
At the same time, it is extremely important that there is knowledge of the preschool's mission in the chain of command in the preschool, from the head of the organization level all the way down to the staff groups. Why am I here? What should I work towards? What should I do in my work? What does the curriculum say? How should I understand it and internalize the content? How should I work and convey it to the children?
There has been a significant expansion of the number of preschool places across the entire country. My colleague Mats Wiking previously mentioned the example of Malmö – which you may hear, I come from there – that there has been a significant expansion. In a few years, we created 2,500 completely new preschool places. It was not a replacement for any that had existed previously. At the same time, we were to recruit and train competent staff for this, for example within the shortage occupations of preschool teachers and childcare workers. My colleague also said that even if we were to recruit all the preschool teachers who retired in southern Sweden, it would not even cover the retirement departures. It is therefore not just a matter of whether the staff want to continue working in preschools or not.
The Liberals govern the Ministry of Education. The Minister for Education is responsible for the soft values and the content in preschool. It shall deliver a good operation for the children. It is the municipalities' responsibility to educate, for example, childcare workers. But then there is also an education minister, who is responsible for universities and colleges. That includes the education of preschool teachers and other educators and competencies that can work in preschool.
How will the Minister for Education work to create more educational places, for example for preschool teachers, and how do the Minister for Education and the Minister for Education communicate with each other?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Mr. Speaker! There were many different issues, and they are connected. Swedish preschools have held a world-class standard, I would like to say. I believe that quite a few of us are concerned - naturally not everywhere, but in some municipalities - that the quality has dropped. An important reason for that is that the proportion of educated staff has decreased. This applies to both preschool teachers and childcare workers, who have attended upper secondary school or completed adult education and received a proper degree. In both categories, the proportion has dropped.
I believe that Mats Wiking is right in that it is not primarily changes in the preschool teacher education that determine whether it will attract more. But it is part of, and a major problem with the teacher educations overall, that many of those who enter have too poor prior knowledge to manage the education. Therefore, there are many dropouts. Improving the preschool teacher education and the other teacher educations is thus still an important factor in this, as an answer to what Rose-Marie Carlsson asked about.
The Riksdag allocates a lot of money to, among other things, reduce the size of children's groups. I have previously been responsible for the size of children's groups in a municipality, and I know that it is of great help if one sets limits, as we did in Stockholm, and works according to them instead of it being completely free. I believe that it is an important model, but it is nevertheless the municipalities that are responsible for this. What the state can do is to allocate state grants for, for example, smaller children's groups, staff development, and that preschool teachers are included in the professional program. There are a number of measures. The preschool teacher education and its development are also significant.
Mats Wiking (S)
Mr. Speaker! You usually get what you pay for. That can be said in connection with the economy and investments in preschool teachers and childcare workers.
I want to address the quality aspect and what the research says. The research shows that children in their development need security, stability, and a few adults to attach to. Developmental psychology speaks very clearly about this. Besides the parents, the staff at the preschools therefore become extremely important. Trained, knowledgeable staff become a large part of children's early development. For optimal secure care and pedagogical challenge, children need small contexts with great security and stability, where there are few adults who meet the children daily in the preschool.
Mr. Speaker! At the same time, there are great opportunities to open up preschool and give all children access to its pedagogy. Many municipalities have also chosen to give children of parents on parental leave and the unemployed more time at preschool than the statutory 15 hours per week. Many preschools do a fantastic job with, for example, language learning.
We politicians have great confidence in the preschool's compensatory mission. They do a fantastic job, that must be pointed out. Despite a work environment with noise and high sound levels, preschool teachers and childcare workers have been of sturdy stock, stayed and developed the preschool through the years. But coming generations, Mr. Speaker, who are to educate themselves and work with the preschool, do not view working in just the preschool as positively. They do not want to expose themselves to the tough work environment with many children and low wages. If the preschool is to have the important function that society wants it to have, fewer children per educator are needed. The staff should have the opportunity to provide the care and security in education that the children in Swedish preschools deserve.
We have talked quite a lot about this regarding trained staff, so I will not go into it further now. It is quite obvious.
Meeting children with untrained educators and large groups of children is something that leaves marks on the children for the rest of their lives. When we now talk about giving children more time in preschool, we must ensure that the state steps in and takes its responsibility and ensures that preschool becomes more equal across the entire country, so that it is not just high quality in certain municipalities. We need a preschool with sufficiently many qualified and trained staff and an operation permeated by pedagogy and care. We need a vision and a knowledge boost for preschool where we ensure that competence and resources accompany when governments decide on new reforms within preschool.
Is the Minister for Education prepared for a knowledge lift even in preschool, just as we had within adult education? What is the Minister for Education's vision for a future preschool?
Paula Örn (S)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the Minister, even though I do not feel that I received that many answers to the questions I asked.
The Minister for Education says that the government is making major investments for more money for smaller children's groups. In that case, I want to refer back a bit to the previous interpellation debate here in the chamber. Does the Minister for Education not see the massive cuts that are occurring in Sweden's municipalities right now? I do not claim that the state grant has not been increased in this budget, but given the cost crisis and the cost increases that inflation has led to in the municipalities, there is currently no one, I would say, who has the possibility to reduce any children's groups or hire more staff. Perhaps one can alleviate the damage somewhat by not having to lay off quite as many.
I wonder if the Minister for Education sees the same picture as we do and shares our view on the problem of a resource shortage caused by the inflation crisis and Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, for which the municipalities can hardly be expected to take responsibility.
I want to conclude with another small calculation. The Minister highlights that one increases the opportunities for competent and skilled preschool teachers by "investing" 50 million kronor per year in the continuing education of preschool teachers and teachers. For my home municipality, that means 170,000 in a budget of nearly 1 billion. Even though the money is welcome, everyone understands that there won't be much continuing education for the preschool teachers when they, together with the teachers, are to share less than 1 per mille of the budget. If one is to make a real difference, financial investments on completely different levels are needed from the School Minister and the Government, both when it comes to children's groups and when it comes to education for preschool teachers.
Rose-Marie Carlsson (S)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the Minister very much for her contribution, which I did not, however, think contained any answer.
My colleague Paula Örn mentioned the investments that the Minister is talking about. But we know that just over 50 municipalities in Sweden are running at a deficit and are budgeting with a deficit. These are not large investments. How is one then supposed to handle this? One needs to expand a lot if one is to reduce the size of the children's groups and so on, as we have reasoned about.
I am thinking a bit about the cooperation with the universities. In Malmö, we have a good cooperation with Malmö University. We have discussed the preschool teacher education and what other paths one should be able to take. One might be able to study part-time and work part-time and link it together in that way. But when we contact the university, they say: No, we do not have money to start an education, and furthermore, we do not have teachers who can provide the education.
Therefore, my question remains: How does the Minister for Education communicate with the Minister for Education so that we can get other educational pathways and more preschool teachers?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Mr. Speaker! The problem right now is that too few people are applying for the preschool teacher training, as well as the other training programs. I believe it is important to, for example, tighten the admissions.
I am still a bit surprised by such a lack of interest from the universities to have the type of education where one can study part-time and work part-time. I have personal experience from such a system here in Stockholm that works very well. It is a way to retain skilled childcare workers, which they generally are, while they simultaneously receive an education to become preschool teachers. The dropout rates in those types of initiatives are very low. I truly agree with Rose-Marie Carlsson that it is a way to use, but it is not the only way. We must ensure that more young people want to become preschool teachers.
I also think that we must change the childcare training in Sweden. Today, we have a childcare training that is at a high school level. But we also have quite a few municipalities that have different types of labor market policy initiatives where they let, above all women, take courses that they actually have quite difficult to absorb, mostly depending on that they have too poor knowledge of Swedish. I mean that we should try to sharpen this, so that we, for example, get a well-functioning vocational package that one should go through to call oneself a childcare worker. We are not quite there yet, but that is my absolute goal.
I believe it is important that the municipalities invest in setting caps for the children's groups. Some municipalities do this. I myself come from a municipality that has worked relatively successfully with this, the City of Stockholm. It is not always the case that all children's groups adhere exactly to the numbers that the municipal council has set, but it has the effect that one at least looks at this and tries to limit the size of the children's groups in a somewhat effective way. It is up to the municipalities to do this. But there are state grants that are to be used to achieve, among other things, just this, and I think it is important that those state grants have been increased significantly in recent years.
Mats Wiking (S)
Mr. Speaker! I thank the Minister for Education for the answers. We have had a discussion about quality, and we can state that educated staff mean a great deal for quality, but that it is also a deficient number of people who seek out childcare training and preschool teacher training.
One of the questions is how we achieve an equal preschool of high quality. I can state that our municipalities have different conditions depending on size and geographical location. Some municipalities can invest in the preschool thanks to their finances, while others unfortunately must scale back. During 2023 and 2024, our municipalities have received even poorer opportunities to maintain the quality in the preschool. Municipalities are, as stated, having to lay off trained preschool teachers and childcare workers. The risk exists then, even if a state grant is provided, that the children's groups increase in size instead of decreasing.
Mr. Speaker! The Government claims that each municipality shall be responsible for ensuring that sufficient resources are allocated to healthcare, school, and care. It is reasonable that the municipalities take their responsibility. But in times when the municipalities' finances do not add up, as my colleagues have pointed out, the state needs to take a much greater responsibility so that healthcare, school, and care shall have equal conditions throughout the country.
Small targeted state grants to the preschool, which is what is at issue, do not solve the problems of there being many children per staff member in the preschool. It is only sufficient general state investments to municipalities and regions that give the preschool greater opportunities to become more equal. This is a discussion that we have had over the years. We can state that the children's groups have not decreased since 2005, as we reported a moment ago.
We politicians in general and the government in particular should listen more to the staff and the research, which are clear that more children in preschool do not contribute to solving the problems with the working environment for either the children or the staff if the opportunity is not given to hire more educators.
My final questions are: What is the plan to make preschool adapted to all children's needs? What is the plan so that the municipalities do not have to lay off preschool teachers and childcare workers?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Mr. Speaker! Thanks to the members for an interesting and exciting discussion! I believe we all agree that a good, well-functioning preschool is of crucial importance for children's development, not least when it comes to those children who perhaps do not have the very best conditions at home. But for the preschool to be able to play this important role in children's lives, a high proportion of preschool teachers and other trained staff, that is, childcare workers, is required. That is not where we are today.
Rose-Marie Carlsson was pointing out that the number of children has increased significantly in recent years. Now we see a decreased number of children, and this possibly reduces the pressure on preschool to some extent. My hope is, of course, that the municipalities will not scale back this important activity but continue to invest in preschool.
The state contributes its share to the pile, partly through the regular state grants in the so-called bag, and partly through a number of targeted state grants, for example to reduce the size of children's groups and offer competence development for preschool teachers and other staff in the preschool. I believe that this is important.
I also believe that we will return to this debate eventually. It is large and important, and we have a common responsibility in the government, the Riksdag, and not least the municipalities.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.