The Swedish education system drives segregation and injustice, according to Social Democratic Party leader Magdalena Andersson.
She wants politics to "take back control".
Today's market-driven school system fails the young, she says in her Almedalen speech.
Magdalena Andersson begins her speech in sunny Visby by addressing the war in Gaza and notes that bombs fell over Rafah again last night.
The fact that this situation has been allowed to arise at all is a stain on human history.
She then moves on to a topic that The Social Democratic Party has been talking about for a long time – politics must take back control of social development in Sweden, particularly in schools.
According to the Social Democrats, it's about stopping the "market experiment" with free schools.
Let's pull the emergency brake on the establishment of new profit-driven free schools and then take the next step to completely abolish the market-driven school system, she says.
Today's Swedish education system drives segregation and injustice instead of combating them, according to Andersson.
There is no intellectually sustainable argument for allowing this to continue.
Swedish as the main language
The Social Democratic Party has demanded that Swedish be the main language in primary school. Schools with an English focus will be forced to have at least 75 per cent Swedish tuition. The proposal would primarily affect free schools.
We can't have special legislation that benefits certain school corporations, Andersson said earlier in the day to TT.
Swedish should also be the main language in upper secondary school, but the regulation may need to be less far-reaching there, according to the Social Democrats.
Today, primary schools that have exemptions for English tuition are required to hold half of their lessons in Swedish.
Lack of evaluations
The national minority languages should be protected, according to the Social Democrats, and are not covered by the proposal. Neither are the IB programme in upper secondary school nor education targeted at children who are temporarily in Sweden.
According to Andersson, research shows that pupils have an easier time absorbing knowledge when taught in their mother tongue.
The Social Democrats also want to remove an exemption that allows English schools not to employ qualified teachers. Today, these schools can temporarily employ foreign teachers who lack Swedish teaching qualifications, which is unreasonable, according to Åsa Westlund, education policy spokesperson.
It's clear that free schools have made money from lower teacher qualifications, she says.
The Social Democratic Party wants to raise the minimum requirement for the proportion of teaching that should be in Swedish to at least 75 per cent. Today, the limit is 50 per cent for schools with exemptions for English tuition.
Teachers who teach in English should also have qualifications.
Mother tongue, the IB programme in upper secondary school, and education targeted at children whose parents are temporarily in Sweden are not covered.
The Social Democrats also want to introduce a requirement for the use of Swedish in grading and official decision-making in primary schools with a Swedish curriculum.
