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Sweden's schools minister declares charter school 'system failure'
- Dennisward 3y ago[dead]
- jjgreen 3y agoTFA has a great photo of gormless Gove
- gerikson 3y agoUnfortunate use of Swenglish in the headline. In Swedish, "friskola" means a school separate from the normal primary/secondary school funding system, run by the kommun/council. So it can refer to a school funded by a private company, foundation, religious group etc. Primary and secondary education in Sweden is free for the pupil or their guardians, it is payed through the tax system. The current system, in place since a few decades, is akin to a voucher system. I.e. the funding is ultimately via the taxpayer, but through different organizations.
- hef19898 3y agoSo, it is basically a failure of non-public schools, and not a failure of "cost-free" schooling. Which makes a lot more sense. Someone should change the headline, before the discussion turns south...
- CaptainZapp 3y agoSubmitter here I didn't want to editorialize, so I used the original title. I changed "free school" to "charter school" which may make contextually more sense. I hope that's acceptable.
- dontlaugh 3y ago"Charter school" doesn't mean the same thing in different English speaking countries.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoThe English Wikipedia page for “charter school” specifically talks about friskola as an example of one. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school#Sweden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school#Sweden
- dontlaugh 3y agoWikipedia is using the US meaning of the word for some reason. I'm don't think translating "firskola" to UK English as "charter school" would be correct, just like no one uses the term "charter school" to refer to institutions in the UK.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoMaybe because it’s the common definition of the world for majority of English speakers. The UK is not the end all be all of the English language. Something can be a common term everywhere else in the world. If nobody ever uses the term in the UK, then why would its definition matter or be different?
- dontlaugh 3y agoEnglish is a second language for many Europeans and we tend to use the British variant. It matters because the original title was changed to a term only popular in one country.
- littlestymaar 3y ago> The current system, in place since a few decades, is akin to a voucher system. I.e. the funding is ultimately via the taxpayer, but through different organizations. Is it the system advocated by Milton Friedman or is it different?
- stringsandchars 3y ago> Is it the system advocated by Milton Friedman or is it different? I think Milton Friedman's idea, was that parents would actually receive education 'vouchers' and be free to use them in whichever education context they chose for their children. This is slightly different, as the private/public system is wholly handled by the State system: parents simply choose between alternative schools, and the state channels taxpayer's money to whichever school the child attends. Unfortunately, in many cases this has simply led to corporations or individuals who employ fewer or less qualified teachers, who in turn hand out 'optimistic' grades to the kids (attracting more parents), and extracting enormous profits from the State system. At the same time, the normal State schools are being starved of resources; standards are falling, leading to more parents putting their kids into the private schools, leading to an inevitable downward spiral.
- kristopolous 3y agoThis is basically the neoliberal story. I can't fathom for the life of me how people committed to historical concrete analysis can continue to advocate for these schemes. They always end up in exploitation. People's commitment to ideologies seem to be stronger than any material evidence.
- coryrc 3y agoThen you don't live in or near school districts failing to educate their students for decades: Detroit, Baltimore, even parts of Seattle fail to graduate young people capable of reading and writing near grade level, let alone understand even algebra. Year-after-year they fail a new class.
- jjgreen 3y agoUK English has "public schools" which are private fee-paying, so Swenglish has the edge here
- RugnirViking 3y agouk public schools are public in the sense if you have the money for tuition you can go, wheras "private" schools are only open to invited families, no matter how wealthy they are
- jjgreen 3y agono
- arethuza 3y agoUK "public schools" are pretty much a subset of private schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_(United_Kingdom)
- jjgreen 3y agoIn the UK, public & private are pretty much synonyms in the schooling context, traditionally the public schools were the "grand institutions", Eton, Harrow etc, but you'd struggle to find anyone who would make that distinction in the present day. If you did, they probably went to one of them.
- arethuza 3y agoI must admit that I'm in Scotland and my son went to a couple of private schools (though they seem to call themselves "independent" schools) - never heard anyone referring to a public school other that in UK media discussing Eton etc.
- jjgreen 3y agoI can well believe that the madness of "public school" being a private school is a peculiarly English phenomena.
- sampo 3y agoWikipedia translates the Swedish friskola as charter school in English. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friskola https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friskola https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school#Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_school#Sweden "A charter school is a school that receives government funding but operates independently of the established state school system in which it is located. It is independent in the sense that it operates according to the basic principle of autonomy for accountability, that it is freed from the rules but accountable for results."
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoThis is basically how the schooling system in the Netherlands works. Any group of people is free to found a school based on their own beliefs (religious, pedagogical, or otherwise), and such schools are quite common. The historical reason for this freedom is that Christians wanted to found religious schools, but it has since widely been used by a variety of religious and non-religious groups.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mullsork 3y agoAre those schools privately or publicly funded?
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoThey’re funded by the state.
- bozhark 3y agoSensationalized headlines don’t belong without context on HN
- andrelaszlo 3y agoThis is an interesting development since the original reform was initiated by Moderaterna, the conservative party leading our current government. Here's the proposal (in Swedish) from 1991 by Carl Bildt (PM) and Beatrice Ask (minister for schools). https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/5277FE6D-7C0B-47CB-AE25-7B2234DE5FBE https://data.riksdagen.se/fil/5277FE6D-7C0B-47CB-AE25-7B2234... They were in a coalition with Folkpartiet (now Liberalerna) back then as well, so this sounds like healthy self-critizism to me. That's a bit unexpected in our current political climate where you can't even admit you forgot your passport. ("There was a logistical obstacle" is a hilarious euphemism that I will definitely steal though! https://www.thelocal.se/20231003/swedish-foreign-minister-misses-kyiv-summit-after-forgetting-passport https://www.thelocal.se/20231003/swedish-foreign-minister-mi...)
- mythhabit 3y agoI must admit that I do not know the specifics of the Swedish model of "friskolor", but I do know that a translation to "free schools" are so misleading that intentional deception seems to be the explanation. We have a similar concept in Denmark, but here they are called "private schools", some of them are also called "Friskole", which can be translated the same way as the headline - the meaning is however that their metodes are "free" of the municipality decisions about education, not that they are free of payment, quite the opposite, they often require additional payment. They get the same funding for each student as the public schools, if and only if, they meet certain requirements, basically the same law as public schools are required to meet. And specifically, they must be a "self owned" institution and all funding can only be used for the school and education. They are free to require the aforementioned additional payment, but they cannot be profit generating if they want funding from the government.
- robertlagrant 3y agoI'm English and I thought of financially independent schools when I read the headline. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by your own interpretation.
- mythhabit 3y agoThey are for profit schools that receive government funding. Is that financially independent?
- robertlagrant 3y agoI don't know how my opinion of whether or not something is financially independent affects this. I didn't interpret the headline as a claim that "schools people don't have to pay for directly" are a failure.
- marvin 3y ago«Free» as in freedom of the traditional, Scandinavian unity model that was pretty much the only option when the term was invented. To receive this privilege, you need to associate with a religious movement or alternative teaching style. I can speak confidently only for Norway, but the level of almost totalitarian historical social unity will be very unfamiliar to Americans.
- timonoko 3y agoThese "Private Schools" in Finland were famous for hosting bad boys from rich families who could not make in government schools. However the one I was in produced famed business leaders and prominent mathematicians like Raimo Lehti. My problem was mild dyslexia, which was not diagnosed in any way 60 years ago. It took me 3 months to learn read and write, while other kids did it in 2 months.
- jeena 3y agoIt has been a disaster from the start, but it got worse and worse with time. I remember reading that the schools would give the children iPads and other things just so they would sign up for that school. Basically they would bribe the children to get the parents to send them so that they could make more money. And that's only the top of the iceberg ...
- belorn 3y agoAt the center of the issues lies with the way the school get founded. Every school, government or independent, get the same amount of money per student. However, government run schools and independent school have different requirement and regulations, which unsurprisingly leads to issues. Independent school are not outsourced education where the government issues the requirements and pays the bills. Government pays the pill and then the idea is that the students (children) are the ones that should issue requirements and thus move if they feel the school is not serving them. Government run schools must exist and be located to serve everyone in society, including students that on average cost more than other students. Government schools must also over-allocate space so that changes in population can still be managed. Government run schools can not be secular, and in practice unable to reject students. On top of this there are critique of rampant corruption and fraudulent grades given to students, both which looks quite bad when dealing with government money. In one case there was also connection to terrorism and IS funding.
- borlum 3y agoVery poorly worded/translated headline. "friskola" does NOT mean FREE schools. It is actually private scrolls that are not directly controlled (fri = free as in not controlled) by the government. They are is usually religious or otherwise connected to some methodology or believe system.
- PurpleRamen 3y ago> But in recent years, a drop in Swedish educational standards, rising inequality and growing discontent among teachers and parents has helped fuel political momentum for change. Does this mean students on the charter schools are lacking in ability? Are there no rules for checking the results of those schools results, with independent tests? Or how exactly is this meant?