The moderates criticize the government for doing too little to break the segregation in the school. Minister of Education Anna Ekström (S) answers that the problem is that it is not possible to get proposals through the Riksdag.
– We read about Eastern religions and then we get an idea of how they feel about that, but we do not really have anyone who practices those cultures, says Oliver Magnusson who goes to Sandgärdskolan.
In Borås, more than goes every other student in a segregated school. In Oliver Magnusson’s school, only eight per cent of the students have a foreign background, compared with an average of 33 per cent in the schools in the municipality in general.
Sveriges Radio’s review shows that more and more students go to segregated schools, ie schools that deviate by at least 20 percentage points in one direction or another from the municipal average.
In ten years has the share pupils which attend such clearly segregated schools increased from just over one in five to just over one in four pupils in the country.
This does not surprise the Moderates’ spokesperson on school issues, Kristina Axén Olin. She criticizes the government for not doing enough and emphasizes that during the previous coalition government, a salary increase was introduced for teachers who applied to schools with major challenges.
But there are still big differences when it comes to teacher qualifications?
– It probably makes it look better than it would have done if we had not made those changes. What I also think is necessary is to be able to close schools that lack quality and do not have enough qualified teachers, says Kristina Axén Olin.
To close schools comes does not help the basic problem of segregation and the lack of equality, says Minister of Education Anna Ekström, who would rather see changes in the direction of what the investigator Björn Åstrand has proposed, for example that queuing time should not be used as a selection for schools:
– I am very negative to what is today an element in Swedish schools, that you can have queuing time as a choice to enter a school. It’s like asking for a segregated school.
That this development has not been broken during Anna Ekström’s four years as Minister, she explains that it is difficult to get through proposals in the Riksdag that address the causes of segregation. Now she hopes for a majority in the Riksdag to implement changes to the selection for popular schools, but will probably not receive support for it from Kristina Axén Olin, the Moderates:
– It does not affect the quality of a school and means that the best teachers and principals choose a school to remove the free choice of school.
Source: ICELAND NEWS