Response to interpellations 2024/25:42, 56 and 64 regarding students who lack eligibility for further studies
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
L claims that the government is working on investigations to improve the grading system, adapt the curriculum, and create more paths to working life. L argues that the state's contribution in 2025 will be the largest in 20 years and that the school needs more focus on factual knowledge 1. L also argues that the grading system must reflect the students' knowledge 1. S considers the grade F to be crucial for the students' future 2 and that the government's resource supplement only covers inflation 3. S argues that a system that knocks out 15 percent of the students is a systemic failure 4. C considers the current grading system to be unique in the world and unnecessarily shuts out children 5. SD suggests that principals must provide support in a timely manner and allocates 3.5 billion extra for targeted interventions 6. SD argues that the problem is rather about individual responsibility, lack of Swedish, or absence 7.
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! Åsa Westlund has asked me how I and the government view the grade F and whether the government intends to abolish the grade F. Linus Sköld has asked me what I intend to do so that the dropout rate will decrease instead of increase in the transition between primary school and upper secondary school. Niels Paarup-Petersen has asked me how I intend to act to remove the negative consequences of today's sharp passing grade and to reverse the development of the government's reduced state contributions to the school.
The Swedish school system faces major challenges. It is a very large problem that just over 16 percent of the students who complete primary school do not reach eligibility for a national program in upper secondary school. The Government has worked from day one to address these serious challenges. The Government has therefore commissioned several inquiries that are to submit proposals which, among other things, aim for more students to succeed in their schooling, for the grading system to become more equitable and representative, and for there to be several paths to education at the upper secondary level and to working life. I will here account for some of these.
Today's curriculum for primary school has too little focus on basic facts and skills. For many students, it is difficult with high demands on abstract thinking, reflection, analysis, and independent work. It is therefore important that more complex abilities and higher demands are introduced gradually based on the students' cognitive development. The curriculum investigation (U 2023:09) has, among other things, the task of submitting proposals on how the curriculum can be better adapted to children's cognitive development and to different student groups' cognitive prerequisites to reach the grading criteria.
The schools' work with support measures is central to many students' learning, where early and adequate measures are a prerequisite for students to be given the opportunity to achieve the goals of education. Therefore, the Inquiry into Improved Student Health (U 2024:01) has been tasked with submitting proposals that strengthen student health and reviewing the regulation of support measures in schools. To create better conditions for students to achieve eligibility for the national programs of upper secondary school, the inquiry More Mandatory Teaching Time for Students Who Need It (U 2023:07) shall simultaneously review how students in need of more teaching time actually also receive it.
Furthermore, today's grading system has major flaws. A well-designed grading system should harmonize with the school's mission to convey knowledge and thereby promote the students' knowledge development. The investigation on equivalent grades and merit values (U 2023:02) shall analyze and submit proposals for changes in the grading system and the system for merit evaluation.
At the same time, not all students can study higher education preparatory programs in upper secondary school. More educational pathways that lead to employment are needed. Therefore, we need, for example, a new vocational education at the upper secondary level that has adapted and, in some cases, lower admission requirements. The investigation on more paths to working life (U 2022:03) has, among other things, the task of submitting proposals for new elective vocational educations that can provide students with a faster entry into the labor market.
When it comes to resources, I am aware that the Swedish preschool and school are in a tough situation. The government therefore proposes in the budget bill that just over 2.9 billion SEK be allocated to the school for 2025. The state's contribution to the school will thus be the largest in 20 years, measured in current prices. Included in the proposals is a reinforcement of the so-called knowledge grant by 700 million SEK to just over 8.2 billion SEK and a reinforcement of state grants for staff reinforcements by 850 million SEK in 2025. I therefore do not agree with what Niels Paarup-Petersen states regarding reduced state grants to the school.
Through these investigations and budget allocations, among others, the government has taken major steps on the way towards re-establishing a strong knowledge school. I look forward to the reports that will be presented and the continued work.
When Niels Paarup-Petersen (C), who submitted one of the interpellations, reported that he was prevented from attending the meeting, the third deputy speaker granted that Anders Ådahl (C) instead participated in the interpellation debate.
Åsa Westlund (S)
Madam Speaker! I asked two very concrete and simple questions to the government and the Minister: How do the Minister and the government view the grade F? Does the government intend to abolish the grade F?
Madam Speaker! Unfortunately, the Minister does not even mention the grade F in the answer to my question. However, I asked the question based on the fact that it is very decisive for many people's future, not least for the 16 percent of a student body who every year are excluded from continuing their studies in a national program in upper secondary school due to the grade F - approximately 18,000 students every year.
It is also a crucial issue for our society. A high school diploma is, just as the Minister for Education said here a short while ago, completely decisive, almost a requirement, on today's labor market. Those who do not have a high school diploma have a much higher risk of unemployment, mental ill-health, and even crime.
The grade F also seems to contribute to students in need of support receiving it much later, even though an argument for introducing the grade F was actually the exact opposite. But today we know that students often do not receive the support they need and that the support is implemented much later. We also know that in Sweden, the support is implemented later than in other countries.
Despite all these negative effects of the grade F, the government began the mandate period by banning an ongoing investigation proposing that F should be removed as the threshold for upper secondary school. However, a few weeks ago, the Minister for Education and the Minister for Education and Research wrote a debate article in Svenska Dagbladet, where they said: "Sweden is the country in the EU that fails the most students in primary school, even though Sweden does not have a larger proportion of low-performing students according to the international knowledge measurements. It is, of course, completely unreasonable."
It was a welcome awakening. But apparently, this was not the government's policy, and the article authors' titles under the debate article were quickly changed from ministers to liberals.
That is why I wanted to gain clarity through my interpellation regarding what the government actually thinks. Unfortunately, I did not receive an answer to my very simply formulated questions, so I will try to obtain some greater clarity by formulating myself a bit differently and perhaps make it easier for the minister to answer.
Does Minister Lotta Edholm intend to stick to the policy that the Liberal Lotta Edholm considers "completely unreasonable"? That is to say, will the government stick to a policy that results in Sweden having clearly the most students failing primary school in the entire EU, even though Sweden does not have a larger proportion of low-performing students than the other EU countries? Or can we look forward to a change in a policy that, according to the Liberal Lotta Edholm, is "completely unreasonable"?
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! I want to begin by pointing out that this, as Åsa Westlund said, affects 18,000 children. This year, it concerns 16 ½ percent of the graduating students in grade 9. We must not reduce these people to a figure or a statistical piece of data that we simply throw around. I want to point out that this concerns young people's life destinies and opportunities to live a good life, receive an education that leads to work, develop as individuals, and realize themselves and their dreams. That is what 18,000 students are deprived of in the transition between primary school and upper secondary school. It is about 18,000 sixteen-year-olds.
When Lotta Edholm says that these are serious challenges, I definitely agree. But when Lotta Edholm says that she has worked with them since day one, the question arises how it can be that they affect a larger proportion of the outgoing student cohort now, when half of the mandate period has passed, than when Lotta Edholm took office.
I move on to some more specific questions. Niels Paarup-Petersen asked a question about resources. Lotta Edholm defends herself a bit against the description of declining resources. It is not that long ago that Lotta Edholm was forced to admit that the government's and her descriptions of the resource supply to schools were nothing more than sugar-coating. The real value that the government provided was, in fact, less than it had been the year before. Lotta Edholm's credibility regarding the concepts "historical investments" and "the largest in 20 years" is actually zero. It is as large as the increase in general state grants to the municipalities in the government's budget proposal for 2025, that is to say, zero.
The Government assumes that in 2025, an increase of 3.43 percent of the appropriations will be required for the real value to be maintained. This is called price and wage adjustment. It is expected that prices and wages will rise by 3.43 percent in 2025.
In the expenditure area we are debating today, the government's supplement happens to be quite exactly 3.43 percent. That means that the money set aside for education and university research will cover approximately the same amount in 2025 as it did in 2024, if one considers inflation.
With this, I would like to pose the question to Lotta Edholm as to whether she has made any analysis of what role the reduced resources that the school has received from the government in recent years have played for the increasing proportion of failing students.
Anders Ådahl (C)
Madam Speaker! We in the Center Party began a major renovation of our school policy about 1 ½ years ago. We quickly designated the school as one of our most central policy areas. We saw that Swedish schools had major problems. We saw a private school sector that had lost its grip on itself. We saw a lot of other things as well. What is being debated here today, the dropout rate in Swedish schools, is something we noted early on. In some parts, I would like to send a few words of praise to the Minister for Education, who, on question after question, seems to have glanced at the Center Party, even if one might be lagging nine months behind.
Things are happening at the ministry that we see as positive. A number of investigations are heading in the right direction. Regarding what is being discussed today, however, it is very unclear where the government stands. I would like to read a line from the interpellation to Minister Lotta Edholm, which captures where the Center Party stands: "We need a school for both those who sit at the back of the classroom and those who sit at the front - a school that simply gives every student the chance to succeed."
We need a school for those who live in the furthest reaches of the countryside just as much as for those who live in the city center. We need a school for those who live in the suburbs just as much as for those who live in a well-to-do area. We need an equal school.
What does the situation look like right now? Well, the latest figures show that 19,900 students left ninth grade this spring without the eligibility to apply further to upper secondary school. These are figures from Skolverket. Aside from the years after the refugee crisis, the dropout rate has never been so large.
The dropout rate in Swedish schools is unique in the world – or world-unhealthy, if you will. In no other country are as many students dropped out as in Sweden. Despite this, Sweden's students perform relatively well internationally.
Of course, there is very much we can do to strengthen students' knowledge. In this context, it involves, among other things, investments in evidence, teacher training, and smaller classes. But it is also obvious that the world-unique – or world-awful – grading system in Sweden contributes to tens of thousands of children and young people being knocked out unnecessarily every year. The consequences have proven to be disastrous for society and perhaps most of all for the individual. Just as Linus Sköld said, it is about people, individual children and young people, who are prevented from moving on to upper secondary school. We have a grading system that shuts them out.
What does the government actually want here, in both the short and long term? How are we to eliminate the dropouts in the short term? Should we think that it is every young student's own fault and that one has to blame oneself if one sits there with failing grades, or does society, through the government, have an immediate responsibility to rectify the situation?
Patrick Reslow (SD)
Madam Speaker! I had not actually intended to speak in this debate, but I could not help myself when I heard the representatives, especially from the Social Democrats. Linus Sköld said that students who do not manage to move forward from primary school to upper secondary school are deprived of opportunities. I believe we must nuance that.
It is naturally a tedious situation, and no one in this chamber probably thinks it is good that many students do not meet the requirements of primary school and cannot move forward. But to say that they are being deprived of something, I think, is to imply that the fault lies with someone other than the individual student. It is not that one is being deprived of anything.
There are plenty of opportunities for those who receive a grade of F in a qualifying subject to rectify this. We have introductory programs at the upper secondary schools that one can attend.
It is also very many who are quite close to a higher grade in some subject and where it requires quite small efforts to get them over the hump.
There are also those who are far away. That group is not exactly homogeneous - on the contrary. There are those who hardly speak Swedish and cannot benefit from the education because it has been considered more important to invest in mother-tongue instruction or because one has not taken responsibility for the mass immigration policy one has pursued. There are also those who lack the ability to benefit from studies. One does not dare to talk about that either. One runs and hides behind a bush and talks about something else. There are those who do not go to school. It is about absence and truancy that one must address. There are a multitude of problems, but to say that students are deprived of opportunities, I think is a rather poor description of what it is actually about.
Students still perform well internationally, says Anders Ådahl. That is correct. Above all, those students who have a Swedish background perform very well internationally, despite everything. But when we include the second group, the one that does not have a Swedish background, we see the problems. This suggests that the major problems in Swedish schools are not about having eligibility requirements, but about not making the right interventions at the right time, ensuring that the Swedish language is strengthened, and ensuring that the students can take in the education.
Is it then right to have sharp boundaries? What we must also remember is that it is not the case that the person who wants to enter a vocational program must have passing grades in all subjects. Instead, it is that we have the three subjects Swedish, English and mathematics, and then an additional five subjects, in which one must have passing grades. Whether one then gets in or not depends, of course, on what the application pressure looks like; that will happen regardless of whether we have a merit system or not. It is therefore not the case that passing grades are required in exactly all subjects.
I think this shows a lack of understanding of what awaits these students later. The Social Democrats have championed that all vocational programs should also have a theoretical profile, meaning that the students should study theoretical subjects. But all of a sudden, one does not see that the students must have the right prior knowledge with them in order to be able to pass these theoretical courses. It becomes a strange argument in the end.
Statsrådet Lotta Edholm (L)
Madam Speaker! I have received a number of different questions. One question was whether I am impatient, or something of that sort. I truly am! Swedish schools have a number of different problems that must be addressed, but it is also the case that they must be addressed within the laws that exist in Sweden. The laws say that we must appoint inquiries, refer them, and come up with referrals to the Council on Legislation and eventually come up with government bills.
What I tried to do in the written response to the interpellation was to describe that all these questions are interconnected. For example, it is the case that many students today have very great difficulty, even though they exert themselves a lot, to actually achieve a passing level—not because of the grading system, but because of the course plans and curricula that exist and which place very high demands on the ability to analyze, discuss, and so on. We have far too little focus on factual knowledge and not least on skills, that is, the ability to read, write, and calculate.
To this, of course, also comes that we, just as an interpellator said, provide special support very late in Sweden compared to in many other countries. We must also address that. We are now working on a ten-year primary school, and we have, among other things, an inquiry that is looking at how the entire grading system should be changed. That inquiry is not finished yet, and that is why I cannot answer Åsa Westlund with a straight yes or no or exactly how it will become. The inquiry has not even been presented.
It is, however, of course the case that the government appointed the inquiry precisely because we see all the problems that actually exist, not least when it comes to grade inflation. I will not say how it was this year, but at least for a couple of years ago, 40 percent of the students in grade 9 received a higher grade in mathematics than they had performed on a national test a couple of months earlier. That is, of course, completely unreasonable. We must have a grading system that actually reflects the students' knowledge, and that is what these directives are about.
I believe, therefore, that one makes it far too easy for oneself if one thinks that this is only about the grade F. It is about so many changes that are required in Swedish schools so that we can ensure that students who are in need of special support actually receive it - and receive it early.
Today, it is 20-25 percent of the students who cannot read properly. If one does not learn to read in primary school and then moves up to middle school and discovers that larger and larger requirements are placed on being able to read to accommodate the education, it is clear that it is a terrible experience, and we must do something about it. But that requires a long series of changes to the entire school policy, I would say.
Åsa Westlund (S)
Madam Speaker! In the Social Democratic budget proposal that is now on the Riksdag's table, we propose that Swedish schools should place much clearer requirements on the principals to provide support in a timely manner. It should actually not be acceptable to conduct a mapping - which is good that it is done - discover that students need support and then not provide it. It is clear that the support must be given.
We Social Democrats also allocate a significant amount of money so that this can happen. We are allocating 3.5 billion more than Lotta Edholm's government to schools just so that targeted interventions can be made at an early age. With our budget proposal, we finance an extra teacher in every class in grade 1. That would make a big difference for the opportunity for students out there to receive support at the right time and actually learn the basics that Lotta Edholm herself points out are of the utmost importance.
There are many other things that are also important in Swedish schools. Lotta Edholm was touching on curricula and study plans, and I have said previously that I believe the government is doing a good job in this area. Just how good we don't know, as we have not seen the results of the investigation yet. We will have to see. But it is definitely the case that the study plans decided by Lotta Edholm's predecessor Jan Björklund did not measure up. The Social Democratic government, together with the Liberals, took steps to rectify that already a few years ago, and now the government is moving forward with it. All of that is good.
There are countless issues that can be discussed in the school area, but my interpellation was specifically about the grade F because it is an issue that the government representatives themselves are out and talking about. It is of crucial importance. The government has also, I would like to remind you, taken measures regarding the grade F. An investigation has been prohibited from proposing changes.
We see the largest party in the government support being part of the debate here today. We also know that there is a party - Liberalerna - which writes: "Sweden is the country in the EU that fails the most students in primary school, even though Sweden does not have a larger proportion of low-performing students according to the international knowledge measurements. It is, of course, completely unreasonable."
It is unreasonable, and therefore it is completely unreasonable that the Liberals are stuck in a government coalition that obviously wants to preserve this problem. The largest party in the government base cannot even refrain from going there and debating the issue. Even though the government does not even answer questions about the grade F, one feels a need to make a stand. It is clear that it is a completely unreasonable position that the Liberals have - or that the government has and that Lotta Edholm risks being stuck in.
If the Liberals mean it seriously when they say that this is completely unreasonable, there are other government alternatives that are better for Swedish schools, for the Swedish labor market, and for the many students who, before the grade reform where the grade F was introduced, actually both entered and completed upper secondary school. That proportion decreased when the grade F was introduced. This means that it is actually only the grade that knocked out these students. Then it does not apply to all 18,000, but a portion of them were knocked out just because of the grade. It would be very simple to change.
Linus Sköld (S)
Madam Speaker! To begin with, one must admit that a system that consistently knocks out slightly over 15 percent of the students is a systemic error and not something that Patrick Reslow can place on the individual. But that is exactly what he does. He steps out in defense of the system and says that we should keep this system. He says that it is the individuals within the system who make mistakes – they are inadequate or come from the wrong country.
It is the individuals that are wrong in Patrick Reslow's world - not the system. In my world, it is the opposite.
I start from the beginning when it comes to the grade F, or rather from the Tidö Agreement. In the Tidö Agreement, the group behind the agreement stipulated that the grading system would also continue to have a limit between a pass and a fail result.
On November 21, 2022, just after the Tidö Agreement was signed, Lotta Edholm told the newspaper Läraren that she would never contribute to the removal of the F grade. We then cut to September 19, 2024, when Dagens Nyheter trumpeted the headline "School Minister prepared to scrap the F grade".
Another few days passed. On September 22, that is three days later, Lotta Edholm together with Johan Pehrson signed a debate article in Svenska Dagbladet. "We must not have a grading system that leads to a large proportion of students being excluded from upper secondary education," it stated there. However, she did not sign that debate article as Minister of Education, and Johan Pehrson did not sign it as Minister of Education. Instead, they were suddenly members of the Liberals' party board and party leader respectively.
This has given rise to a number of questions. Lotta Edholm has received written questions, which she answered both on September 4 - before she made the position shift - and on September 25, i.e., after she made the position shift. She has provided essentially the same answers without answering the question. Before this interpellation debate, she was asked the same question once more by Åsa Westlund, but she still has not answered it.
What is the government's position regarding the rejected grade step? I thought that Lotta Edholm would get an opportunity to elaborate on it, but then it struck me that Patrick Reslow is here in the chamber to keep the member of the Liberals' party board in check. Patrick Reslow is here to keep her in line so that she does not say what she said in Svenska Dagbladet, namely that the grade F should be abolished. That is why he is here. That is also why he takes the floor against me and rushes to the defense of the system.
The question perhaps should be directed to Patrick Reslow instead. What is the government's position regarding the rejected grade step? Can both Patrick Reslow and Lotta Edholm please explain this?
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.