Compulsory preschool year for six-year-olds to be replaced with extra year in primary school from 2028
Children in Sweden are to start school at six years old from 2028, a year earlier than at present, in an overhaul of the country’s education system that signals a switch from play-based teaching for younger children.
The government has announced plans to replace a compulsory preschool year for six-year-olds known as förskoleklass with an additional year in grundskola (primary school).
The centre-right coalition government, led by the Moderates and backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, announced the plan before the presentation of the 2025 budget, due on Thursday. The plan dates back to the previous government and is also backed by the left-leaning Social Democrats.
I used to think the same, but kids are really much further ahead these days.
There’s a lot of variety of course. Even my two kids are totally different. The older one knew the entire alphabet and basic math before kindergarten (<4yo), while the second one was still catching up on that in 2.grade (8yo here). Their gross motor skills are opposite though, and the oldest might never catch up on that.
So, play is learning in one way or the other, but there’s no reason to hold back the children who are talented in one thing over the other. My oldest is being held back that way by the current curriculum. Starting school earlier might be a way of addressing this.
It’s really just a matter of task assignment between institutions. Anything pre-school (nursery and kindergarten) is focused on behaviour and play, while early school (gradually) introduces more abstract learning, which requires a different teaching by teachers with a different education. Strictly speaking, it’s a teachers problem, and there’s currently not much overlap, except for “backwards compatibility”, because schools do have employees who are educated in kindergarten levels, whereas kindergartens do not have school level teachers employed. By introducing school earlier, it is possible to widen this overlap while still allowing for kids to proceed in their own pace.
So, IMO, it makes sense, but yeah, it’d be dreadful to go to “school” for that many years. Coincidentally, kids also leave schools earlier. There’s no longer many kids in 10th grade, because almost everyone goes on to the following studies after 9th these days. (which is a completely different discussion…)
I hope this makes sense. British/American school system are wildly different, but at the end of it, the kids will be kids, no matter what box they fit into.
My gut had me wanting to say the same thing, but looking at the age ranges, this actually seems reasonable and in line with how many other countries operate. By 6 years old, students in the US are in first grade, for example. Kindergarten a year or two prior as well, which is also compulsory in some states.
Sweden is in general a no-fun zone. Gotta have a license to have fun.
Also the school system teaches kids to be good little drones.
That’s bullshit, it’s fun just in different ways.
Sweden is coffee and biscuits while the US is cocaine with meth as a treat.
The system is all over the place, it’s safe for them to be drones, but if they show any potential they get fired up the railgun of intense academics like you can’t believe, they have some absolutely incredible engineers and scientists, and as a percentage of their population it’s almost unheard of.
The downside is after school they tend to leave for the US or elsewhere, the actual job opportunities for world-class scientists and engineers in Sweden are decent, but their yield of talent far, FAR outstreteches the economic capacity to carry them.
They have the talent pool of West Germany with the population of, well, Sweden (10.5m, it’s tiny).
Kids in Sweden going to school at pretty much the same age as kids in a lot of the rest of the world means Sweden is anti-fun?
