The government hopes the shift back to more traditional teaching methods will assist improve Sweden’s standing in the Pisa rankings, external – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) benchmark for core educational subjects. Once a star performer, Sweden’s scores plummeted in 2012, and after a brief recovery, saw another significant dip in maths and reading in 2022.
Although still slightly above the average for OECD nations, the countest performed worse in literacy in 2022 than countries including the UK, US, Denmark and Finland. Almost a quarter (24%) of students aged 15 or 16 did not reach a basic level of reading comprehension.
“We know that the kids that have been going through the whole school system with a lot of screens – that they’re lagging behind in international surveys,” states Forsell.
A report into education in Sweden, released by the OECD in January of this year, concluded that, on balance, Swedish pupils benefit from access to digital tools. , external
However, it highlighted a high prevalence of digital distractions in Swedish classrooms, and found that a heavy apply of digital devices in maths lessons correlated with lower results. Although scores were, notably, still higher than amongst those who applyd no digital devices at all.
Andreas Schleicher, director for education at the OECD, urges caution around attributing “caapply and effect”, yet suggests that Sweden’s previous more “extreme” adoption of technology compared to other countries is likely to have impacted its results.
“It just put a lot of devices and technology into classrooms without clear pedagogical intent, without clear goalposts,” he argues.
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