Response to interpellation 2023/24:753 on the recovery of school fees
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
L believes that more order is needed in the school system and that the space for actors with quality deficiencies should be significantly reduced 1. L states that the government has commissioned an inquiry to investigate the possibility for municipalities to reclaim paid grants in cases of economic crime or if the school funding is not used appropriately 1. L emphasizes that the inquiry should also propose increased fines, sanction fees, and possibilities for compulsory management of poor free schools 2 3. L argues that the inquiry on a national school funding norm aims for increased equality and that the financing of municipal schools and free schools should be separated 3. L admits that major changes are required in the free school system due to both the system's drivers and problems such as radicalization 4. L argues that the Inquiry on profit in schools and the large inquiry on a national school funding norm exist to ensure that the major problems that actually exist in the system are dealt with 4.
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! Rose-Marie Carlsson has asked me if I will take the initiative to change the current regulations, so that schools that are forced to close due to extensive quality deficiencies also become liable to repay the compensation that the students' home municipalities have been forced to pay out to them.
There needs to be more order in the school system, and we shall significantly reduce the space for actors with quality deficiencies. Today, there is no regulation of how the so-called school money, that is, the public funds that an individual head of school receives from the student's home municipality, may be used. This means that these grants can be used for something other than school activities, and there is a lack of legal basis for municipalities to request the return of paid grants.
The Government considers that unserious and unsuitable actors should not be allowed to appear within the school system. The Government has therefore tasked the Inquiry on Profit in Schools (U 2022:08) to, among other things, investigate whether it should be possible for municipalities to, in certain cases, be able to reclaim paid grants and how the size of such a reclamation should be determined. The inquiry may also propose in which other cases paid municipal grants should be able to be reclaimed. The task has been given in accordance with the Riksdag's announcement that it should be investigated on what grounds the school funding can be withdrawn by a municipality if economic or other serious crime occurs in the operator's activities, if a person in the ownership or management circle is convicted of economic or other serious crime, or if the school funding is not used in what the inquiry finds to be appropriate.
All children and students have the right to a high-quality education regardless of where in the country they live. In order to identify and address deficiencies regarding the quality and equality in schools and other activities, as well as to ensure a safe school environment, the appropriation for the activities of the Swedish Schools Inspectorate has been strengthened following the government's proposal in the budget bill for 2024. This means that the Schools Inspectorate's administrative appropriation is increased by 25 million kronor in 2024 and is estimated to increase by 40 million kronor in 2025 and 60 million kronor from 2026 onwards. The expansion of the Schools Inspectorate's activities means increased presence and more inspections, including more unannounced visits, and the initiative is expected to have a positive impact on the quality and equality in preschool and school. The expansion of the Schools Inspectorate's activities, together with the investigation into profits in schools, constitutes two important links in curbing the occurrence of unserious and unsuitable actors within the school system.
Rose-Marie Carlsson (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for the answer.
Just before Christmas last year, the County Administrative Board announced that TAU Hantverksskola, an independent upper secondary school in Malmö, had such extensive deficiencies that the permit to conduct education would be revoked and the school would be closed at the beginning of this year. 105 students were sent home for the Christmas break with a large lump in their stomachs of stress and worry about the future.
Malmö stad and other Skåne municipalities have done a tremendous job to secure new school places for the students. During 2023, Malmö stad has been forced to clean up after two independent upper secondary schools that had their permits revoked due to extensive deficiencies. First it was Thoren Innovation School and then TAU Hantverksskola.
Despite teachers reporting to the School Inspectorate that there had been enormous knowledge deficiencies among the students at TAU Hantverksskola, only a single student had had an action plan established. According to the School Inspectorate, there were students in the language introduction program who were neither reading Swedish nor Swedish as a second language. One-fifth of the students had an absence of 50 percent or more. The list of completely hair-raising deficiencies can be as long as one likes.
Last school year, Malmö city was forced to pay over 32 million in compensation to the two upper secondary schools for teaching that later turned out to be completely substandard. And the scandals do not stop there, as it was later revealed that the owner of TAU Hantverksskola had annually taken out millions and put them in his own pocket. Tax money that should have gone to youth education has financed the owners' luxury cars and homes all over the world. Thorengruppen has, on the other hand, among other things built a sports arena in Umeå with its school money. Congratulations to Umeå, but it was the children of Malmö who had to pay for it! At the same time, the School Inspectorate has invested great resources in its investigation.
It is a betrayal of Sweden's children and young people that tax money is time and again plowed into schools that do not provide them with the education they have a right to. The students cannot get their high school years back, but the only reasonable thing in these cases is that the school pays back the compensation it has received so that the money can instead be used to give the students the support they need to complete their studies once and for all.
Today, the municipalities completely lack a legal basis to conduct those types of processes. Just over a year ago, the government decided on a supplementary directive to the Investigation on Profit in Schools. One of the additions concerned when it should be possible to reclaim grants from an individual principal, something that – just as I mentioned and which the minister has touched upon previously – cannot be done today.
The Minister refers in his answer to this investigation, which has also been tasked to investigate whether there may be a possibility for the municipalities to, in certain cases, demand back paid grants. Both in the directive and in the School Minister's and the Government's previous statements on the issue, much focus has been placed on cases where school funds have been used for criminal purposes or for purposes other than school activities, and not directly on cases where the quality of education has extensive deficiencies.
My question to the Minister is: Will the Minister work to make it a basis for reclaiming school fees if an individual head of school has its permit revoked due to extensive quality deficiencies?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! Rose-Marie Carlsson points out some of the problems that sometimes exist in the independent school sector. The investigation that is currently underway has the task of submitting proposals on stricter regulations, and this includes, for example, the ability to reclaim money if the school fee is used for something other than school.
The directives also include that the investigation shall submit proposals, for example, on increasing the penalty amounts when a free school does not comply, as well as proposals on sanction fees. Today, the School Inspectorate can demand a penalty, but a penalty is actually intended for an operation to tighten up and change - the penalty amount is only demanded if measures are not taken. On the other hand, there is no possibility today for sanction fees, that is to say fines, for the one whose operation simply does not meet the requirements to a sufficient extent, and the investigation has also been tasked to submit proposals on that.
The investigation thus has quite extensive directives so that we can address the very large deficiencies that actually exist in the independent school sector.
Rose-Marie Carlsson (S)
Madam Speaker! I thank you for the answer, even though I do not think I received an answer to my question. But I will continue nonetheless.
Once again, we stand here debating the excesses of the market school, that is to say, schools operated in the form of limited companies. It is a form of operation that does not belong within Swedish schooling, regardless of which school form it concerns. These are schools whose owners are not interested in students completing their schooling but are driven by maximizing as much profit as possible, which is not actually so strange since they follow the Companies Act. We are not against independent schools, but it is the form of operation that we are against. I have full understanding that those who invest money in an enterprise want the money back and preferably a little more, but then there are many other enterprises that are suitable to invest in.
I return to what the debate is about, namely the clawback of school fees. It is difficult to talk about the clawback of school fees and not mention equal conditions, which means that the independent activity should have the same compensation as the municipal school fee. In preschool, it is child allowance we are talking about.
The school funding for the coming year is usually determined before the turn of the year, and thus a deficit arises in the budget when students are received on very short notice or when the student base decreases. When the municipality steps in and injects money to cover the deficit, the independent actors must also be compensated, completely without them having had to do anything and even if an independent operation is about to be phased out due to quality deficiencies.
It can also happen that an independent school closes its operations because it has not been sufficiently profitable, which we have experienced in Malmö on one occasion. The municipality must then arrange new school places for the students. In hindsight, it also turns out that the students have not received the education they are entitled to. The municipality thus has an obligation to arrange these places on very short notice, and then it turns out that an educational debt has arisen for the students.
In addition to the money that the principal has been given to provide to the relevant schools and which has been distributed in the same way, the municipality can therefore put in extra resources and thus incurs extra costs once again. Partly, compensation has been paid out to its own operations, partly it pays to the independent ones. Then they think that this is not profitable, or they have other quality deficiencies, and so the municipality has to pay twice: first when the school fee is paid and then when one has to step in and replace the substandard education. By "replace," I mean the lost knowledge for which one incurs extra costs, for example for special pedagogical support and so on.
There is also an investigation regarding the school fee norm, which we have talked about previously. It is to review and submit proposals for a model for municipal and private principals that takes into account the different structural conditions and needs of different principals, that is, a differentiation of the compensation because the municipality has a responsibility that the independent actor does not have. The independent actor can, on very short notice, wind down its operations without any consideration whatsoever for the students.
My question to the Minister is therefore: How does the Minister intend to ensure that the investigation into the school fee norm takes into account what I have described, that is, that the municipality has to pay twice?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! The investigation on profit in schools deals with a number of different parts that touch upon what Rose-Marie Carlsson raises. For example, it is to be investigated whether a municipality should be able to reclaim the money if the school fee is used for other activities, but it is also about the penalty amounts being able to be increased and about us introducing a completely new system with sanction fees, that is, fines, if a free school does not improve its conduct.
The investigation shall also submit proposals on how a free school that is so poor that it should not exist can be placed under compulsory management. That possibility exists today for the municipal school system—it has only been used once, in Botkyrka municipality—but we want the system to also exist for free schools. The investigation will therefore submit a multitude of different proposals intended to improve the free school system and ensure that the free schools meet the requirements that can actually be demanded.
The second investigation – the investigation on a national school funding norm for increased equality – concerns both the municipal school system and the independent school system. The idea is that it should become more equitable between the municipalities. There is a great difference today in how much the municipalities invest in their schools.
There is also a part of this that concerns separating the funding for municipal schools and for the free school system so that municipalities, for example, should be able to invest more in their municipal school if they are in need of it without it automatically falling into the free school system, which does not have the same mandate as the municipal school system de facto has.
I look forward to both investigations presenting their proposals.
Rose-Marie Carlsson (S)
Madam Speaker! I still do not think I received an answer to my question. We are talking about somewhat different things. The Minister is talking about that the School Inspectorate can impose a fine on the independent school, which may decide to shut down the operations despite having received the same compensation that the municipality has given to its own operations. In that case, a fine does not play such a large role for the municipality to be able to demand back its school money.
To come back to this, I can say that one of the principals I spoke about earlier here risks a record-sized fine in its operations in, among other places, Helsingborg. Skolinspektionen decided to conduct an ownership and management review, but what happened then? Well, then the principal chose to sell its shares. Then the company gets a new owner and a new board that is to be appointed, and then they shall be reviewed.
There have been some issues regarding this, and this shows how fluid it is between a school group and the municipal operations. One of the board members was an education director in a Skåne municipality, and the board assignment was to be regarded as a side job. This was changed later, whereupon the board member chose to resign from the municipal operations.
Furthermore, a gigantic bureaucracy is being built up. The Minister previously spoke here about the money that is allocated for the School Inspectorate to carry out audits. Previously, we have talked about the municipalities' supervision of preschools, which they do without receiving money – it is rather the opposite. But in the market school, it shall be allowed to cost money.
The market school cannot be solved with more control and bureaucracy; instead, one must address the fundamental problem. My question is therefore: How much is the state control apparatus allowed to swell before the government with the Sverigedemokraterna realizes the problem with the market school?
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! Yes, major changes are required in the free school system. There are major problems there that can be attributed, among other things, to the drivers within the system itself.
Then it is clear that there are also problems that are not related to the drivers. We have, for example, seen problems with radicalization, Islamism and so on in some schools. There are schools that the School Inspectorate says have too small a basis or too weak finances.
There are a number of different problems that must be addressed, but in different ways. That is why there is the Inquiry into profit in schools, but also the large inquiry into a national school funding norm. Both of these inquiries exist to ensure that we deal with the major problems that actually exist in the system.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.