Published 19 September 2024 at 08.15
Domestic. Government investigator Magnus Henrekson wants to replace the current grading system with a ten-point grading scale that is calibrated according to each school's results on national tests. That way you avoid the problem of grade inflation, happiness grades and teachers who only give girls the highest grades.
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The investigation shows that the Swedish grading system is unique in its arbitrariness and nepotistic design.
– In our review of a wide range of countries, we have not found any country other than Sweden where individual teachers can set grades without any form of standardization or calibration and where these grades are then the ones that determine admission and selection to the next level of education, says Magnus Henrekson to the newspaper Vi Lärare and states further:
– The marketing of the Swedish school system also makes it especially inappropriate to have such a system in a country like Sweden. The system simply does not give teachers the conditions to set nationally equivalent grades. Nevertheless, for just over 30 years we have let it roll on.
He calls today's grading system the most demoralizing that exists in Sweden.
– It is arbitrary, harmful and corrupting, he tells the newspaper.
In his investigation, Henrekson is expected to propose that a ten-point grading scale be introduced that is calibrated against each school's average result on the national tests, which means that no school can give too high grades.
All national exams in grade nine and in upper secondary school must also be digital and corrected centrally, which makes it impossible to get better results on the national exams by, for example, being a woman, being ambitious or by smearing the grading teacher.
If the system had already been introduced today, the grade discrimination against boys would be reduced, and there would have been less difference in the merit values of boys and girls, even though the proposal in no way prevents the teachers from assign higher grades to girls than their national exam results allow.
Free schools' average grades had also been lower and the ranking of different schools based on grades had been different, according to Vi Lärare.