The results of the Pisa survey are dismal. Never before have Swedish 15-year-olds been so poor at math, reading comprehension and science. But Sweden is not alone, as the decline is an international trend.
We are in the midst of a screen pandemic. A pandemic that extends across the entire OECD, where our children and young people are having their futures destroyed by the algorithms of apps, says Simona Mohamsson.
It is the screens that are the poison in our society, both in and out of school.
Therefore, she believes it is absolutely crucial to replace screens with books in Swedish schools.
We should have pulled the handbrake much earlier, says Mohamsson.
She has no answer as to why Swedish students are falling further behind than the OECD average.
“National emergency”
Social Democrats party leader Magdalena Andersson instead points to school cuts as the reason.
"The Pisa results show that there is a national emergency for Swedish schools. This must be a wake-up call," she says at a press conference.
It is a hair-raising and deeply worrying result for a knowledge-based country.
She believes that Mohamsson and the rest of the government are now blaming “everyone else.” According to Andersson, the Tidö parties have failed to provide sufficient resources, remove screens and keep class sizes down.
Both Mohamsson and Andersson blame each other, but both L and S have been responsible for school policy in recent times. There have been Liberal education ministers for 12 of the last 20 years, and S-led governments have governed for 6 1/2 of the nine years that the tested 15-year-olds have been in school.
Several factors
The Swedish National Agency for Education has no ready explanation for what caused the landslide, other than that several factors play a role.
The Left Party points to the "market school experiment" as the cause, but SD leader Jimmie Åkesson believes that neither screens nor profit-taking can explain the decline in knowledge.
"These are excuses for refusing to see the fundamental problems," Åkesson writes on X, pointing to immigration and lack of language skills.
