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EDUCATION

‘Renationalize Sweden’s schools’: Liberals

The state ought to once again take over primary responsibility for Sweden’s schools, according to a proposal under consideration within the Liberal Party (Folkpartiet).

Published: 20 October 2009 07:37 CEST
'Renationalize Sweden's schools': Liberals

The party cites a report by the National Agency for Education (Skolverket) which questions local control of Swedish schools. The proposal is outlined by party leader and current education minister Jan Björklund and two other members of the Liberal’s governing board in an opinion article published in Tuesday’s edition of Dagens Nyheter.

According to the report, handing over more control for schools to Sweden’s 290 municipalities is one of the reasons why Swedish students don’t perform as well today than they did in the 1990s.

The “dual leadership” of having municipalities and the state share responsibility for schools results in a “muddled system of control”, according to the Liberal Party.

“The question of ‘who is responsible?’ should be able to be asked and answered for any given operation. But when it comes to schools, the state can simply blame municipalities, while the municipalities can claim that it is due to poor governance by the state,” write the authors.

Another reason for renationalizing the schools is a requirement in Sweden’s schools law which states that all children have the right to the same level of education.

Today, there are large differences in school spending between different municipalities, the authors claim.

“No one’s life conditions should be worse simply because they happened to be born in a municipality that doesn’t prioritize education,” write Björkland and his colleagues.

They also think that the status of the teaching profession has dropped and that it has been harder to recruit young people into teacher training programmes since municipalities were given partial control of schools in the early 1990s.

Björklund and other leading Liberal Party members have previously expressed support for giving full control of schools back to the state, but the party’s 2001 national conference nevertheless decided that the main responsibility should remain with municipalities.

Now the party’s leadership wants to ditch the earlier decision at its next national conference, scheduled for later this autumn.

According to the Liberal Party, it’s high time to bring up discussion of the issue among the four governing centre-right Alliance parties.

Currently, no other party has taken up the issue of renationalizing Sweden’s schools.

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EDUCATION

Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

Children between ages 6-9 years should be allowed admittance to after-school recreation centers free of charge, according to a report submitted to Sweden’s Minister of Education Lotta Edholm (L).

Published: 29 November 2022 15:54 CET
Inquiry calls for free after-school care for 6-9 year-olds in Sweden

“If this reform is implemented, after-school recreation centers will be accessible to the children who may have the greatest need for the activities,” said Kerstin Andersson, who was appointed to lead a government inquiry into expanding access to after-school recreation by the former Social Democrat government. 

More than half a million primary- and middle-school-aged children spend a large part of their school days and holidays in after-school centres.

But the right to after-school care is not freely available to all children. In most municipalities, it is conditional on the parent’s occupational status of working or studying. Thus, attendance varies and is significantly lower in areas where unemployment is high and family finances weak.

In this context, the previous government formally began to inquire into expanding rights to leisure. The report was recently handed over to Sweden’s education minister, Lotta Edholm, on Monday.

Andersson proposed that after-school activities should be made available free of charge to all children between the ages of six and nine in the same way that preschool has been for children between the ages of three and five. This would mean that children whose parents are unemployed, on parental leave or long-term sick leave will no longer be excluded. 

“The biggest benefit is that after-school recreation centres will be made available to all children,” Andersson said. “Today, participation is highest in areas with very good conditions, while it is lower in sparsely populated areas and in areas with socio-economic challenges.” 

Enforcing this proposal could cause a need for about 10,200 more places in after-school centre, would cost the state just over half a billion kronor a year, and would require more adults to work in after-school centres. 

Andersson recommends recruiting staff more broadly, and not insisting that so many staff are specialised after-school activities teachers, or fritidspedagod. 

“The Education Act states that qualified teachers are responsible for teaching, but that other staff may participate,” Andersson said. “This is sometimes interpreted as meaning that other staff may be used, but preferably not’. We propose that recognition be given to so-called ‘other staff’, and that they should be given a clear role in the work.”

She suggested that people who have studied in the “children’s teaching and recreational programmes” at gymnasium level,  people who have studied recreational training, and social educators might be used. 

“People trained to work with children can contribute with many different skills. Right now, it might be an uncertain work situation for many who work for a few months while the employer is looking for qualified teachers”, Andersson said. 

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