Oooh, that's clever

Very political, we think misleading, but we’ll agree that it’s clever:

Sweden has declared a “system failure” in the country’s free schools, pledging the biggest shake-up in 30 years and calling into question a model in which profit-making companies run state education.

An excellent system that has worked very well but:

A report by Sweden’s biggest teachers’ union, Sveriges Lärare, warned in June of the negative consequences of having become one of the world’s most marketised school systems, including the viewing of pupils and students as customers and a lack of resources resulting in increased dissatisfaction.

Well, yes, obviously, unionised producers aren’t going to take kindly to actually having customers that they must serve and please. All of that’s just obvious. The thing that passed through our minds was, well, how are they going to dress this up?

Edholm also accused some free schools of grade inflation, with teachers awarding children grades that were too high – creating imbalance across the whole system. It is understood to be a particular problem in free schools with a low proportion of qualified teachers and schools run as joint-stock companies.

“Free schools tend to give higher grades than municipal schools. That risks that in the end it could be that the municipal schools give higher grades, and that in turn is very bad,” she said.

“It’s unfair and it leads additionally to students thinking they are much more knowledgable than they are.”

Well, yes, that could be true. It could also be true that the free schools teach better than the municipal ones. We would expect they would too but then that is only our expectation. No doubt there are many who would disagree with us. Which is fine, we just then test the products of free and municipal schools to see which explanation fits better. Grade inflation or better teaching?

They have done that, right? Hmm, they haven’t? We have an evidence free assertion to back a political policy? Well, we’d not say that this is a good idea but it is obviously enough a clever one.