Published 4 December 2024 at 14.15
Domestic. The Swedish school is “in free fall”, if the reports are to be believed. However, a new international survey shows that Swedish students are better than the neighboring countries' students in both mathematics and science. But only if you exclude students with an immigrant background.
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Swedish students in both grades 4 and 8 have improved their results in mathematics since 2019, it shows the international knowledge measurement TIMSS 2023.
In science, however, the Swedish students perform at the same level as in the previous measurement in 2019.
An interesting aspect of the measurement is that they also compared results between different countries with regard to students who do not have an immigrant background.
It then turns out that the students in Sweden whose mother tongue is Swedish – despite the alarm about the specific decay of Swedish schools – perform better than their Finnish and Norwegian counterparts.
Best in the white world
Best in the white world
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“GOD”, states school researcher Gabriel Heller Sahlgren in a post on X where he draws attention to the results.
In 2019 we were equal good as Finland on average. Now we are the BEST.
— Gabriel Heller Sahlgren (@ghellersahlgren) December 4, 2024
In fact, the native Swedish students in grade 8 now have the best results in mathematics and NO in the whole white world.
Now Filippa Mannerheim and teacher twitter are getting angry again. Wicked Gabriel with his inconvenient facts…
In Sweden we actually only engage in ✨wishful thinking✨, everything else is evil. https://t.co/GDZEdHqFph
— MEMIS (@MemIngenjoeren) December 4, 2024
The report states that students' immigrant background continues to be important for the results and that this importance has not changed since TIMSS 2019.
On the whole, the Swedish mathematics results in grade 4 are the highest since Sweden began participating with that grade in TIMSS 2007. For pupils in year 8, the mathematics results have steadily increased since 2011, when Sweden had the lowest result. In TIMSS 2023, the results are higher than they have been at any time during the 2000s. Pupils in Sweden now perform on average for the participating EU and OECD countries in grade 4 and above average in grade 8.
– Based on this study, it is not possible to determine what the development is due to, but we can state that a number of investments have been made in mathematics, says Anna Castberg, head of the analysis department at the Swedish National Agency for Education.
The results in the international studies TIMSS and PISA have largely followed each other over time, despite the fact that the tests are constructed slightly differently. In the most recent PISA, however, the mathematics result went down for the 15-year-olds – that measurement, however, applied to a cohort two years older and took place in close connection with the pandemic.
In recent years, students' average results on the TIMSS exam have the participating Nordic countries have become more similar. This is particularly clear in mathematics, where the results of the other Nordic countries have deteriorated or remained unchanged, while the Swedish results have improved.
In science, the Swedish trend has been more stable over time, especially in grade 4 where the results are at the same level as in 2007. In year 8, the results are at the same level as in 2003. Just as in the previous TIMSS measurement, the Swedish students perform better than the EU and OECD averages in science.
On average, boys perform better than girls in mathematics in TIMSS 2023 while there is no gender difference in science. But the boys have had a better performance trend relative to the girls in both mathematics and science compared to 2019. This is a general pattern for many of the participating EU and OECD countries in TIMSS 2023.
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