 THE SWEDISH SYSTEM

SEVEN ERIC HENRICSON Head of Section, National Board of Education, Stockholm

(Reprinted with permission for private circulation only from the Report of the Conference on Examination board, Edinburg)

II. EVALUATION SYSTEM IN SWEDISH SCHOOLS

1. According to the Education Act of 1962 for the Comprehensive School and of 1964 for the Secondary Level (Gymnasium and Continuation School) marks shall be given on a 5-point scale. The marks for all pupils in the same form, taking the same subject or course within a subject, should be distributed according to an approximate normal distribution as seen below:

        
                     Mark        1    2    3    4    5
                       %         7    24   38   24   7

The mark 3 is defined as the mean accomplishment for the total group of pupils taking the same subject or course within a subject.

2. No marks are given in form 1; in form 2 marking only at the end of the second year and only in seven subjects. From form 3 all marks should be given for all subjects in the curricula and twice a school year-at the end of the autumn term and also at the end of the spring term.

3. The individual teacher is solely responsible for the marking procedure. No educational or legal authority can correct a mark or force a teacher to change a given mark.

4. In the Comprehensive School there are no compulsory written tests or final examinations. In the Gymnasium we have a fixed number of compulsory written tests from form 1 to 3 (4), three to four in the main subjects in each form. Neither the Gymnasium nor the Continuation School have final examinations.

5. According to the curricula teachers are recommended to gather continuous information about the pupils and their performances during each term. In doing so the teacher should pay attention both to the general goal of the education and to the specific aims of each subject. The evaluation should be based on different types of data such as written tests and oral examinations, observations of laboratory work and so on.

6. The entrance to the Gymnasium and to the Continuation School is based solely on the marks from the Comprehensive School according to the mean of the marks of all subjects, including theore-

tical subjects as well as Music, Drawing, Handicraft and Physical Training. All subjects are equivalent.

7. The entrance to university and other schools or courses after the upper secondary level is based on the marks from the secondary level according to the same general principles as the admittance to Gymnasium and Continuation School.

So far very little is altered from the old to the new system of evaluation in Sweden. What is new is the abolishment of final exa- minations at the secondary level, the compulsory school has never had such examination.

III. STANDARDIZATION OF EVALUATION

Already in the late thirties the problem of standardization of school marks was brought up. The discussion started in the compulsory school in connection with the admittance to lower secondary education ("realskolan"). During the forties the first standardized achievement tests were tried out and put into use in the compulsory school. In 1949 entrance examinations for lower secondary level were abolished and from that time on, standardized achievement tests have been used as a regular part of the evaluation in compulsory schools. In connection with the Education Act of 1950, which started the tryout of the nine year comprehensive school the importance of standardized achievement tests were pointed out.

During the fifties they have been taken into the educational re- gulations for the compulsory school and since 1964 also for the secon- dary level. It should be noticed that it has always been and still is optional for a teacher to use standardized achievement tests or not. The use of the tests has increased and now 90-95% of all pupils in the comprehensive school are taking tests. In the Gymnasium where the tests were put into use from this school-year, all pupils take part in the testing.

The National Board of Education always has been responsible for the tests. In the beginning the construction was done by the authorities outside the Board (the University and later the School of Education of Stockholm). Since 1965 a special section within the National Board has taken over all work with the tests.

IV. TODAY'S SYSTEM OF STANDARDIZED ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

1. Comprehensive School:

Form 3 : Swedish and Mathematics.

Form 6:Swedish, English and Mathematics.

" 8 :Swedish.

English for two different courses, one theoretical and one practical.

German, only for the theoretical course.

French, only for the theoretical course.

Mathematics for two different courses (of English).

The tests are given during periods, which are settled by the Na- tional Board, but it is up to the individual school to choose the day for the tests. Detailed instructions for the testing and the correcting of the tests are distributed to the schools together with the tests. The same tests are used for a period, of about three years.

2. Upper Secondary School (Gymnasium):

Form 2 : Swedish for all pupils.

English for all pupils.

Mathematics (3 different courses).

Physics, only for the Science and Technical branches.

Economics, only for the branch of Economics.

Form 3 : Swedish for all pupils.

German or French according to the choice of the pupils.

Mathematics (3 different courses).

Physics, only for the Science and Technical branches.

Accounting, only for the branch of Economics.

As mentioned above there are compulsory written tests in the Gymnasium. One of these tests is a "central" test, that is a standardized achievement test. The tests are given according to a common plan for all schools, settled by the National Board. The test sessions are spread out from December to May. The tests are new constructions for each year.

V. CONSTRUCTION OF ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

The section in the National Board, which is responsible for the tests, has only technical personnel (psychologists and clerks), but for every subject and type of test there is a group of 5-10 experts on the subject matter. This group and two of the psychologists of the section are responsible for the analysis of the objectives of the instruction in the subject and for the principal form of test. Another group of experts is writing the test items according to the decisions of the

section and the first expert group. Tryout forms of the test are constructed in the section and then tested on a sample of pupils. The data from the tryout are analysed by means of a computer for data like item analysis reliability. The norms for the tests. are based upon a representative sample of results, sent in by the teachers after their pupils have taken the tests.

It may be mentioned that we are experimenting with procedures for optical reading of answer sheets from the tests in order to help the teachers with the correcting of the tests and at the same time have all the data about the results.

VI. OBJECTIVES OF TESTS

Here a difference has to be made between the marks of an indi- vidual pupil and the standardization of the, marking procedure. As far as individual marking is concerned the test is only one part of the observations underlying a mark. In test manual the teachers are forbidden to use the test result of an individual pupil as the only base for his mark.

Talking about the standardization of the marking procedure for the whole country, one must point to the fact, that we have a common curricula for all schools in Sweden and that the teachers' training is regulated by the common curricula. These facts form the first bases for a common evaluation. In spite of this, Swedish teachers certainly have the same problem as most teachers in using a uniform marking scale. Here we use the tests as one of the remedies for standardizing the marks.

The tests are used according to the following general instruction:

1. After the teacher has got the norms for the test he is calculating the distribution and the mean for his class or group of pupils. These data are kept till the final marking at the end of term.

2. Shortly before the final marking the teacher is given preliminary marks. These marks should, as mentioned above, be based on a continuous evaluation during term. For these preliminary marks the distribution and mean are calculated and compared to the data of the test.

3. From this the teacher could see how his own class is standing related to all other pupils in the same form. If there are differences between the two distributions and means the teacher is recommended to adjust his preliminary marks as close as possible to the distribution of the tests.

When adjusting the preliminary marks the teacher should rank his pupils according to their total accomplishments. In case the test has given for instance four pupils with the mark 5, the teacher should give the final mark 5 to four pupils. These pupils should be the four at the top. of the total ranking list, independent of their results on the test.

These general instructions are valid unless special circumstances occur. For instance, some disturbance during the test session, ab- sence of the best-or the weakest-pupils or something similar. Such things could be reasons for not adjusting the preliminary marks into full conformity with the distribution of the test results.

The tests or-to be more correct-the adjusted distributions' of marks for those subjects which have tests are used as general aids for adjusting the distribution of marks in other subjects. This recom- mendation is based on the well-known fact that the means and distri- butions for a class or a group are fairly highly correlated irrespectively of subject.

VII. SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE SYSTEM

When considering an evaluation system one must remember that no system could be perfect in the meaning of absolute individual justice or effectiveness in selection for further studies. The average cor- relations between marks from a 'delivering" school system and those of a receiving school system are according to a lot of experiments, certainly positive but in the range of .40 to .70. This is true for groups, but for the individual this means that there is not too much of concordance as far as individual prognosis is concerned. It is also shown by a lot of investigations that different methods of standardizing the marking system is one way of raising the reliability and the validity of school marks as a base for selection for further studies. We think that one has always to accept a certain degree of "bad selection," unimportant whether we use school marks or ability tests or any combination of these data. The best way of taking care of those who "by chance" are excluded is to give them a new possibility by increased educational opportunities in a system of adult education. That is what we try to do in Sweden by enlarging our adult education in evening-schools as well as by means of radio and television. This certainly means an extra burden for those who "fail," but this system seems to be a better way of raising the effectiveness of an educational system than to spend a lot of money and personnel in raising the validity coefficient from say .60 to .65, which really means

very little for those who are just below the limit of admittance.

The impact of the regulations for admittance to further studies and the data on which the selection is based, are of much more im- portance than the evaluation system of the delivering schools. It is often said that the evaluation system has a bad back wash effect on the teaching and this is certainly true, particularly when written final examinations dominate the evaluation. But in Sweden we have found that the regulations of admittance to the secondary level and to the university level have a bad influence not only on the teaching but also on the system of evaluation.

CONTINUOUS EVALUATION

I must say I am very proud to be here on behalf of the Swedish school system, but I have to make a few apologies, at least for two things. My English is not so very good but you must not blame the compulsory school for that because that system is younger than I. The other thing is that I will not speak to the summary already dis- tributed to you because I think you can read what is in the summary but I will comment on one or two details, especially how our assess- ment system is actually put into practice by our teachers.

But first a few words on the educational situation in Sweden, concerning which we have held quite a lot of enquiries, and on which there have been many developments during the last thirty years. In fact this year the last Acts for shall we say the next ten-fifteen years were passed by Parliament: these are about vocational education and adult education. We got the new Act on teachers' education and teachers' training, last year; in 1964 we had the new Act for the upper secondary education, and in 1962 for the general comprehensive. I think I will not go into details about the comprehensive school in Sweden because it is not so easy to explain or to define what is really meant by comprehensive schools. I should say that the Swedish system is a system where we have very little streaming. I think that's the best way to define it. All pupils are formed into classes from the first form to the sixth and, after that, they are transferred over to the seventh grade. In the first two years of this three-year period, the 7th, 8th and 9th grades, the pupil belong mostly to the same classes as they did before but in certain subjects, Modern Languages and Mathematics, they are divided up into two groups 'because we have one course more theoretical and one less theoretical but in most subjects and for most periods in the week they are together. In the last form, the ninth, they are divided up into quite a lot of

tracks. Some of them are pre-vocational and the other ones are more general. The most general line in form nine is supposed to lead to upper secondary education in what we in former days called the "gymnasium." There is one theoretical group and one practical group connected to each other but the strange thing is, although this was decided in Parliament in 1962 for purely political reasons (because as in most countries there has been should we say not a quarrel but quite a discussion about the comprehensive system and in 1962 we didn't manage to go further than to have a streamed last form in the upper department) yet after three years we have found that this wasn't possible for different reasons. The first thing was that the pupils' and the parents' wishes for the most general kind of education resulted in newly all pupils choosing combinations of subjects which were not general and theoretical and very few chose the prevocational tracks in the ninth grade. In 1965 the National Board of Education set up a Committee which last autumn put forward its suggestions to the Ministry of Education and we hope that this year we will have a decision on that and the suggestion is briefly that we should have a comprehensive ninth year as well as the seventh and the eighth for the reason that so very few pupils want to use the non-theoretical and the prevocational tracks. I think that will be all I will say about the system. There certainly are other questions and I. will try to answer them afterwards but there are some other features of the Swedish educational system that might be mentioned.

If one should put Sweden on the educational map of Europe I should say we are something in-between the United Kingdom and France. We are not so centralised as in France, in fact you can't say that on a given day at a given hour they have the Geography of a special part of the world in schools on the same grade. It would be a nice thing to have because in that case we would have no problem in organising radio and television instruction because the schedule would be the same all over the country I But we have in fact common curricula for every subject and the curricula are. set by the National Board of Education. That holds true for all types of schools for compulsory as well as secondary level and it is true for the universities too. We have common syllabuses at the university level set by the office of Chancellor for all the Universities, and in fact so far as university subjects are concerned which have any connection with teaching in our school system the National Board of Education must be asked about the syllabuses for the universities. Most universities Professors don't like it but this is the system anyhow.

We have also a peculiar system regarding teaching methods, text- books and so on. There is a special State Board, not the National Board, to deal with this. The members are appointed by 'Parliament directly and on some occasions there are quarrels between the National Board and the Board for Text-books in Sweden. They have to decide upon which text-books are allowed for use in teaching and then we have got a great variety-15 to 20 different books on every subject at every stage and the schools have to decide which one they will use but it must be on the list of the Board for Text-books. Many Committees are working in this field of education. You know Sweden is known, at least in Scandinavia, for the number of its Committees and all the papers the Committees put forward to Parliament, to the National Board and other agencies. We have a Committee working on the problem of how to produce text-books and all the new material one ought to have in a new school. I should say the use of text-books will fade away very soon I think. We will use other materials in 'at least the compulsory school and most of secondary level and we must take care how to produce these things because when it is not easy to write a good text- book it is quite another job and equally difficult to prepare systematised programmed teaching material of any kind using television, radio and other aids. The National Board of Education this Spring have bought over a whole firm for producing film and television material, and thus we have our own set-up that we can work with on an experimental basis. We think this is the most important thing for our growing adult education, which is another part of our system when during the last years the development has been very rapid, for instance to give you some numbers:-in 1955 we had 15% of the age group in the upper secondary schools, now we have 30%: we have doubled during a period of 15 years and that means that quite a lot of people who are now in the age groups of 25 and above are now inferior in edu- cation to their juniors because they had not the opportunity to take upper secondary education. We must therefore build up a system of adult education to give them an opportunity to catch up; that's one reason. The other one is that the developments within industry and on the labour market had already made it necessary to take care of quite a lot of people who must be re-trained and not only in specific vocational areas but in general areas too. Take for instance the problem of supervisors in industry. We have quite a lot of skilled workers but what they don't have is sufficient general education to make them suitable for supervisory work at different levels.