11% of Swedish students excluded from Pisa scores for lacking in language skills

**Östsvensk** · 12-04-2019, 03:02 PM

Swedish students perform better - when newly arrived are excluded
https://nyheteridag.se/battre-pisa-r...nda-utelamnas/

SWEDEN On tuesday, the government cheered to the fact that Swedish students are performing better according to the new Pisa report. However, the results are to be taken with a grain of salt, since 11,1% of the students were excluded from the survey - mainly because they were newly arrived.

Expressen reports that the results of the latest Pisa survey were received with great pleasure by Director of the National Agency for Education Peter Fredriksson and Education Minister Anna Ekström (S) on Tuesday.

- Pisa 2018 shows us that knowledge is increasing in all subjects that are measured by Pisa. Sweden is now greatly above the OECD-average in all subjects. This along with that Sweden has received newly arrived students in records, has a great shortage of teachers and increased the amount of students very much, Ekström said at a press conference.

- This is a message of strength. Swedish school stands strong.

Minister of Justice and Migration Minister Morgan Johansson (S) also hit the chest on Twitter.

But the question is whether the results really give a true picture of the situation in the Swedish school. According to Pisa's rules, some students must be exempted from the examination. These are students who cannot participate due to disabilities or who cannot speak Swedish well enough.

In the new survey, as many as 11.1 percent of the so-called target population were excluded. This can be compared to the fact that 5.7 percent were excluded when the study was conducted in 2015, and that the average for the OECD countries is now 4 percent.

With 11.1 percent, Sweden has the largest share of exclusions of all countries in the entire Pisa study. According to the National Agency for Education, this is mainly due to immigration.

“There are […] good reasons to believe that the increased rate of exclusion between 2015 and 2018 is mainly due to an increased proportion of students with limited experience of the Swedish language. This is because of the migration flows that caused the great refugee crisis in 2015 and which is visible in the statistics of new arrivals in Swedish schools. "

Moderates educational policy spokesperson Kristina Axén Olin describes the report as a sad reading.

- These eleven percent are in the classrooms every day and should also gradutate from Swedish schools with full grades. Then you can't present this as a good result, she tells Expressen.

- It is not possible to hit the chest and think that this Pisa report is a positive read. The children who are most in need of assistance do not receive it. We all have a shared responsibility that it has become like this in Sweden, but also a shared responsibility to solve the problems. This is a tragedy that will end in horror if we do not get organized at a Swedish school.

On Twitter, former parliamentarian Staffan Danielsson (C) has also commented.

11% of Sweden's students did not participate in PISA, the highest proportion of all countries in the world. They couldn't speak Swedish well enough. A proof of the world's most generous migration policy.