The Swedish National Audit Office has initiated a review of the criticized sample in the knowledge measurement among 9th graders, Pisa, which was conducted in 2018.
The reason is that the Swedish National Audit Office has received signals that a disproportionate number of students have been selected out, and that many also did not show up on the test day, which may affect the reliability of the test.
– We will look at how the government has managed this, that is, how has the National Agency for Education been commissioned? And then we imagine that we will look at how the National Agency for Education has informed and communicated about this but also how it has been followed up and what has actually happened in the schools, says Audit Director Sofia Sandgren Massih.
In the international survey in 2018, a total of 5,500 15-year-olds in Sweden participated. Up to 5% of students may normally be excluded from taking the test if their results are not considered to reflect the state of knowledge at large.
But 2018 was excluded more than twice as many, 11% of the students, from participating in the tests in Sweden with reference to the fact that we received so many refugee youths who did not have time to learn Swedish. Something that, among other things, has been criticized politically because it could have given a misleading result.
– We have also previously thought about this issue. Now the question came up again in several different places, you could say, and we had available resources to also start a review now, says Sofia Sandgren Massih.
Minister of Education Anna Ekström (S) has previously asked the economic cooperation organization OECD to review the student data in the Swedish Pisa survey again. But it has been criticized by several parties, including the Moderates and the Liberals – because it is believed that the OECD, which leads the Pisa test globally, is not independent.
But the political demand for an independent review was voted down in the Riksdag today by a margin of one vote, 27 votes to 28 and one abstention. Therefore, the National Audit Office’s initiative is now welcomed by the Liberals’ education policy spokesperson Roger Haddad.
– It is very important that an external review takes place where the OECD, or the National Agency for Education or the government, which are themselves parties to the work, do not participate in the review.
If the National Audit Office proceeds with the review, a result is expected in the spring of 2021.
Source: ICELAND NEWS