This is not Sweden (or yes!)

Something uncomfortable happened to Sweden: for years it lived off the prestige of an educational system that was no longer achieving the same results. PISA 2012 made it hard to ignore: 478 points in mathematics, 483 in reading, and 485 in science. Six years later they were 502, 506, and 499. The average only explains part of the story. In mathematics, between 2012 and 2018, the percentage of students below the basic level fell by 8.3 percentage points and that of those reaching the highest levels grew by 4.6. TIMSS pointed in the same direction: Swedish 8th-grade students went from 484 points in 2011 to 501 in 2015.

Turning this into another Nordic miracle would be false. There is no reform to which we can attribute those points, and some important decisions had begun before 2012. What we do find is a country that assumed the trend was not inevitable and began to touch specific parts of the system.

In 2011, the Lgr11 came into effect. The curriculum specified the centralt innehåll, the central contents, and the kunskapskrav, the knowledge requirements. Methods remained in the hands of the teachers, but it was clearer what the students were expected to learn. Since 2016, moreover, it is mandatory to use national assessment materials in the first grade in Swedish, Swedish as a second language, and mathematics. Behind this is an elemental question: if a child starts having difficulties seven years later, when do we want to know about it?

The response also involved training. The Matematiklyftet (an initiative promoted by the government) involved, between 2013 and 2016, nearly 35,000 teachers from more than 4,000 centers. It reached 87% of compulsory education schools and a figure equivalent to approximately 75% of mathematics teachers in compulsory and upper secondary education. Teachers worked on peer didactics, brought it to the classroom, and then analyzed what had happened.

The Läslyftet (an official continuing education program for teachers in Sweden) applied a similar logic to reading and writing. Between 2015 and 2020, it reached approximately a quarter of the country's teachers and preschool staff. We cannot claim that these programs explain the PISA recovery; the evaluation of the Matematiklyftet (an official mathematics training program for teachers in Sweden) did not measure its causal impact on the results. They do, however, show what it means to attempt to transform practice at a system scale.

The teaching profession also moved. In 2011, Parliament approved the lärarlegitimation, the professional accreditation. In 2013, the förstelärare arrived, with about 5,000 SEK of additional monthly state funding per position. In 2016, the Lärarlönelyftet allocated 3 billion crowns annually for teacher salaries. By 2017, it had already reached at least 65,369 teachers, with an average increase of 2,600 crowns per month.

In 2019, the Läsa, skriva, räkna: read, write, count guarantee came into force. The legislation establishes detection from förskoleklass (when they are six years old) and the first grade, intervention when there is a risk of not achieving learning goals, and subsequent monitoring. The name has an almost provocative virtue: it makes it clear what cannot wait.

The Swedish story has an important asterisk. In PISA 2018, Sweden excluded 11.09% of the target population, well above the 5% threshold of PISA standards. In 2021, the Riksrevisionen detected deficiencies in the monitoring of those exclusions. And in 2022, the results fell again: 482 points in mathematics, 487 in reading, and 494 in science, the latter approximately stable compared to 2018. This is precisely what makes the Swedish case useful. Educational improvement is not won forever. And then yes: Catalonia.

In PISA 2022 we obtained 469 points in mathematics, 462 in reading and 477 in science. The report that the OECD has dedicated this July to our system recognizes a solid institutional base and the commitment to inclusion, but also notes the decline in results and difficulties for policies to reach everywhere with the same strength.

The diagnosis matters. After so many diagnoses, however, I am more interested in one question: what do we do on Monday?

Catalonia is already strengthening mathematics, reading, and evaluation. Now it is time to ensure these priorities last long enough to truly enter the schools and for the data to allow us to know what works. If we start over every academic year, we will accumulate programs without accumulating institutional learning. Sweden did not find any secret formula. For a few years, it demonstrated something more useful: a trend that seemed established could change. This is not Sweden. And it does not need to be.

But if looking towards the north helps us stop treating educational results as a fatality and start treating them as a reality upon which we can act, perhaps there is indeed something Swedish that is worth importing.