Educational Change in Sweden

Abstract

THE EVENTS ON THE EDUCATIONAL SCENE IN SWEDEN after I945 have be seen within a socio-economic framework. Behind the School Reform, prepared by committee work ever since 1940, we find the same forces which have brought about political democracy, economic growth and the Welfare State. It might be typical of the school as a highly institutionalized system that universal suffrage, reforms creating social security and economic expansion are the precursors of educational changes. And these in their turn seem occur according some kind of inherent rank order. The organizational structure is revised and changed by Parliamentary initiative and decision. New course prescriptions are issued by Government agencies. Finally, teacher training starts be changed and slowly affect the 'inner work' of the school. In 1950 the Swedish Riksdag unanimously passed an Education Act which provided for introduction on a 'pilot basis' of a 'comprehensive' or 'unitary' school which would to the extent it proved its usefulness supersede the previous school types covering the first nine years of schooling. The 1957 Riksdag passed a new Act according which a nine year 'organizationally integrated' school should be introduced all over the country after the report of a Parliamentary School Committee had been submitted the Government, which in its turn had make the final proposals the 1962 session of the Riksdag. During the academic year I96I-I962 about half the student population of compulsory school age was taught in the comprehensive system. The Riksdag at its spring session this year passed a new Education Act, which will for a foreseen future guide the development of the compulsory school system, i.e., the nine year basic school. Thus, the comprehensive, 'integrated', school will gradually replace the 'parallel' school system on the secondary level. No wonder, therefore, that the School Reform has stirred up a good deal of controversy in educational circles. The controversy should be seen against the background that the reform means a break with an organizational set-up which reflects a clearly stratified class society: on the one side an elementary school for the common people which on the secondary level runs more or less parallel with a highly selective school, a school recruited mainly from the upper and middle class. Even after the academic type of secondary school was opened children from all walks of life, and admission was based on competitive entrance examinations or marks obtained in the elementary school, the student population tended be dominated by children from homes of more favourable background. Secondary school teachers are trained in the tradition that the secondary school should limit itself children of good scholastic aptitude who can profit from highlevel instruction and are potential university material. At any rate the 'academics' should be taught in organizational separation from the 'non-academics'. The selective trait of the academic secondary school applied not only its admission procedures but the frequency