Fact: Five percent below elementary level
Pirls uses four levels of knowledge:
Advanced level: at least 625 points
High level: at least 550 points
Average level: at least 475 points
Elementary level: at least 400 points
In Pirls 2021, the Swedish results were distributed as follows (with 2016’s share in brackets):
Advanced level: 15 percent (14)
High level: 35 percent (43)
Average level: 31 percent (31)
Elementary level: 14 percent (10)
Below elementary level: 5 percent (2)
In all previous Pirls, the percentage who performed below the basic level (elementary level) has been 2 percent.
Source: IEA, Swedish National Agency for Education
The Pirls reading test is carried out every five years, no later than 2021. The results from that round have now been released and show that the Swedish students got 544 points, which means that the result curve bends downwards. A good result in 2016 (555 points) is followed by the second lowest Swedish score since Pirls started, the international report shows.
“Overall, we see that the Swedish results have worsened, but we have this in common with other participating countries,” says Director General of the Swedish National Agency for Education Peter Fredriksson.
The report also shows that the percentage of Swedish students who perform at a high level has shrunk, while the percentage who perform at elementary level, or below, is increasing.
Despite this, Sweden fares relatively well in an international comparison. Most countries that also took the test in 2016 have a worse result in 2021.
Only four countries/regions have a significantly better result than Sweden: Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia and England. Sweden belongs to a “second best group”, with Finland, Denmark and Norway among others.
Months of teaching
The negative trend is not unexpectedly linked to the pandemic. A large majority of the principals in the various countries testify that teaching was slowed down to varying degrees. Almost half (47 percent) assess that more than two months of teaching was affected.
As you know, Sweden chose to keep the schools open for the younger students, and the principals here testify to a lesser extent about affected teaching. But there were also schools in Sweden whose teaching was disrupted for two months or more. According to the survey, it may have applied to every third school, and should have been about local, shorter school closures and/or high sickness absence.
To what extent the pandemic explains the Swedish loss in reading ability, or whether other factors played a role, cannot be said. The decline is in any case in the same order of magnitude as in other European countries, according to Dirk Hastedt, director of the research organization IEA which is responsible for Pirls.
“What I find more striking is the difference in reading results depending on the students’ social background,” he tells TT.
The family forms
He refers to the international pattern that children from well-educated homes, well supplied with books, perform much better than children from the least privileged homes. The score difference continues to be very large within the Swedish student group.
Peter Fredriksson at the Swedish National Agency for Education also underlines the differences between student groups.
— We are concerned at the Swedish National Agency for Education that we have a segregated school and a lack of equality in the school. This study confirms the picture we had before and even reinforces it.
Both Frediksson and Dirk Hastedt also point to the continued clear difference in results between boys and girls (15 point difference).
The lower reading ability of boys is a well-known and global problem. Perhaps we should talk about a lost generation of boys, rather than a lost generation of pandemic-affected students, reasons Dirk Hastedt:
— When students are in fourth grade, they need to be able to read well in order to learn and develop in all subjects. Therefore, I am genuinely concerned about boys’ reading ability.
He points out that the ability to read is based on an interest in reading.
— We see especially in the Nordic countries that a large percentage of students do not like to read. In Sweden, it is about 35 percent. Interest, self-confidence and performance are linked, says Hastedt.