Teachers should be able to discipline students – for example, kicking them out of the classroom – without having to document it afterwards. Principals must be given clearer responsibility for student safety and students must be able to move more easily. These are some of the government’s directives for the new school investigation.
– There is a documentation fever today, says Education Minister Lotta Edholm (L).
The government wants to give “far-reaching powers” so that schools can maintain study calm in the classrooms. An investigator has been commissioned to review whether teachers can be given more powers for disciplinary measures – without them getting stuck in a mountain of documentation afterwards.
– Today there are far too many ambiguities where teachers risk being reported because they are actually doing their job, says Education Minister Lotta Edholm.
They also want to clarify that the teachers decide on the teaching.
– Today, the writings that exist can be perceived as the teacher’s responsibility for teaching being limited by the rights of both students and parents, says Edholm.
Where will the rowdy students go?
The government wants it to be easier to move the most rowdy students to so-called emergency schools. Both independent schools and municipal schools must be able to do so, according to the government’s proposal.
– It should be easier to move a student temporarily, or perhaps permanently, says Social Services Minister Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (M).
The investigation will also review whether it should be possible to suspend a student for longer than the two weeks per term which is currently the upper limit.
– Today, the school can only briefly, for a limited time, suspend a student who behaves threateningly. The safety of the teachers and other students suffers, says Waltersson Grönvall.
Clear consequences
Principals must be given clearer responsibility for drawing up rules of order, and they also want to introduce a “consequence ladder” where it must be clear what must be done if the rules are broken.
The investigation that the government is now appointing to create order and study peace in the school must be reported by 20 December 2024 at the latest.
Happy Hilmarsdottir Arenvall, director of children and youth in Järfälla municipality, is appointed as a special investigator.