The failure led to students' personal data being leaked to other schools, which is not allowed.
We didn't find the fault when we tested the system in our test environment. It was first discovered when the system was used by teachers, explains Jonas Krantz, acting head of the department responsible for, among other things, the Swedish National Agency for Education's IT supply.
Other ways
The Swedish National Agency for Education pulled the emergency brake, resulting in students having to write the tests on paper, or in the schools' own local platforms.
The fault has now been rectified, writes the Swedish National Agency for Education on its website. The platform is open to the universities that construct and test the digital national tests. However, the decision stands to let students take the tests in other ways during the spring.
The plan is to implement digital national tests in the Swedish National Agency for Education's platform in the autumn.
Criticism
The Swedish National Agency for Education's work on a nationwide digital system for national tests has been ongoing since 2017 and has cost 697 million kronor.
The project has been criticized by teachers and experts due to repeated delays, technical obstacles, and difficulties in getting the system to work in classrooms. Johan Magnusson, professor of information systems at the University of Gothenburg, has argued in, among other things, Vi Lärare that the Swedish National Agency for Education has not kept up with technological developments. Criticism that the Swedish National Agency for Education has listened to, according to Jonas Krantz.
We will make a new procurement since the current agreement expires in 2028. Then it's extremely important that we listen to criticism and take on board other solutions that we may need. One should remember that we procured the current system in 2017, and a lot has happened since then, says Krantz.
