Benchmarking internationally
The quality of Swedish education has been keenly debated over the past decade, following declining results among Swedish students in international comparisons. Sweden has moved to improve perfomances and to raise the status of the teaching profession for long-term benefits.
International studies such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) have indicated a deteriorating performance among Swedish children in recent years.
Most recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which is behind the PISA assessment, followed up on the trends in May 2015 with a detailed review of Sweden’s educational quality.The study, done on the request of the Swedish Government, confirms that Sweden needs to improve the quality of education and in particular raise the performance level of students in reading, math and science. This can be seen in light of Sweden investing a larger share of its GDP on education (6.8 per cent) compared with the OECD average (5.6 per cent) in 2014.