Plates in classrooms – Sweden slows digitization in schools – News

Sweden's school system is highly digitized. Now the Swedish government is relying on traditional teaching again.

Sweden's experience as a digital pioneer: Sweden's right-wing government has now decided to promote digitization in schools. As SRF employee Bruno Kaufmann says, there are several reasons for this: “Studies on Swedish students' reading skills show that it has declined in recent years. New research shows that using digital teaching materials too quickly and too extensively, for example in primary school, can be harmful.

The Swedish school system differs from Switzerland: Kaufmann says the respective governments in Sweden tried to put their stamp on the school system. In the 1990s the system was liberalized and municipalities were given major responsibility. Then came the wave of digitization, which is now scaled back.

In Sweden, children under the age of ten must give up digital lessons altogether.

Things are different in Sweden: Discipline grades and spelling lessons will be reintroduced. Every school should have a library with printed books. Also: “In Sweden children under ten should avoid digital lessons altogether.” Traditional teaching methods, i.e. books, should also be used again in upper classes and high schools. For this reason, the Swedish school authorities have to develop new guidelines.

Finance in Sweden: The Swedish government supports a return to a non-digital system. Some schools have invested their financial resources entirely in digital teaching.

In Switzerland, digitization really started with Corona when it became a necessity.

Comparison with Switzerland: “In Switzerland, digitization has really become a necessity,” says Stephan Wolters, a professor at the University of Bern and director of the Swiss Coordination Center for Educational Research. Before Corona, digital lessons were also used but not across the board yet.

What Switzerland can learn from Sweden: Especially in the lower grades, for example when learning to write, it would be wrong to teach children this through a keyboard. But if the child learns to write with a pen on a tablet, we know that it is very close to writing on paper. Wolters says the teacher can also be relieved by recommending tablet corrections.