Education—Sweden, education of the older and younger generation as the prerequisite of the effective use of the information technologies

Katrin Holmgren

The Swedish Schoolsystem

The Swedish State school system comprises compulsory school and various types of voluntary schooling. Voluntary schools comprise upper secondary School and municipal adult education

Within the goals and frameworks defined by parliament and the government, each individual municipality is free to decide how its schools should be run.

The National Agency for Education (Skolverket) has the task of developing, evaluating, following up and supervising state schooling in Sweden.

The nine-year compulsory basic school is for all children between the ages of seven and sixteen years. If parents prefer, children may start school at six years of age.

Upper secondary school is divided into 16 three-year national programmes, all of which are intended to provide a broad-based education and confer general eligibility for further studies in higher education. Almost all of the pupils attending compulsory basic school continue directly to upper secondary school, and almost all of them complete their upper secondary schooling within three years.

Young persons are entitled to enter upper secondary school up to the age of 20. After this they can choose between various forms of municipal adult education. This comprises regular adult education (komvux) and education. The komvux programmes comprise both basic adult educations’ corresponding to compulsory basic and voluntary education corresponding to the courses offered by upper secondary school

Almost a quarter of all students goes on to higher education within three years of leaving upper secondary school. At university and college they can either take individual courses or a specified study programme. There are universities and colleges at more than twenty centres around the country (http://www.skolverket.se/).

1 July 1997 the government started a five year long programme for adults called Kunskapslyftet. The target group is in first place unemployed that has no education from upper secondary school or is missing some part. The programme also applies to employed with a short education. 100.000–140.000 educational posts are distributed every year. The compensation to the students is the same as unemployment benefit.

(http://www.kunskapslyftet.gov.se/english/)

IT in the schools programmes

In the plans for compulsory and secondary schools, IT is mentioned in a general way. For example: ”in language, mathematics, … Information technology are supposed to be used”. Nothing is said about why, in which way and with which target it is going to be used. It only says that IT is going to be used. And there isn’t any demand for IT-competence defined for the teachers that are supposed to teach with IT. Even the education for future teachers at the university has obligatory courses for education with IT.

IT programmes for education and their results

On the national level there are and have been special programmes for IT in education.

The Foundation for Knowledge and Competence Development: ”The aim of the Foundation is to promote and support the development of competence and create conditions for economic growth. The Foundation promotes activities which are innovative, provide good models for others to emulate and which have long-term objectives.” (http://www.kks.se)

The Foundation has several programmes. One programme is for education including five parts. Among them there is one part for school and one for adult education. The educational programme costs 110.000 Euro.

About 100 projects have been started in schools, municipalities or regions. Some of small other really big ones. 4 projects of these you can find in Norrbotten. Thousands of applications have been sent to the Foundation. It has been a very hard work reading and choosing among many good descriptions. A large administration has implied a long time of waiting for the applicants and many have been given up.

The Foundation thought that the projects should been spread like waves on the water. My opinion is that is have been very small waves, often they have not reached the end of the schoolyard.

I saw the same phenomena when I started several projects in Luleå. We copied the model from the Foundation and started. The project results often developed the involved teachers, one part of the school or in some cases the school. The spread to other schools did not come off. If the committed teacher or teachers left the school the project often didn’t go further.

Most of the projects that the Foundation are managing will be finished 1999.

The Young Council of IT had a task to investigate youngster’s view of IT and their use. 7 young people in the age of 14–27 years wrote 1997 a proposal to government.

The Council said that it was necessary to change working method in school and to change the view of knowledge and learning. More necessary than to polish the old model with IT.

The council also pointed on that IT must be accessible to more people. For the democracy must the accessible to Internet and computers be good in public places as libraries, cafes, schools, youth recreation centre etc.

The council also pointed on the youth interesting themselves both in the global and the local society. They are talking about "the glocal society".

The recommendations and outlines that the Youth council of IT was recommending we can see a little of the IT-programme that the Ministry of Education and Science is starting this year.

The Committee of Distance Education

The Committee initiated projects to a cost of 11.000 Euro and studied the results. The investigation intended to be proposing a programme for distance education, in first case for adults. The report came last autumn and the committee has refereed to several instances for consideration. A proposal is expected during this spring.

The results from the projects don’t show us something new. It is a traditional corresponding school that is distributed in a fast way with e-mail combined with folders on a central server. However the fast communication has lead to an increasing interest for studies on distance. The largest criticism is on the techniques. It doesn't allow working together in-groups, it doesn't give support for consulting with the teachers in real-time and teachers are not so good in using the technique.

The Committee also says that distance education is only suited for adults. Later I will show you net based learning for young people. My opinion is that if education only will be distributed as text it only suits adults that have learned how to capture text and transform it in to knowledge.

Sweden’s National Agency for Education runs the Swedish Schoolnet, as commissioned by the Swedish Government. It started in the autumn of 1994. A great deal has happened since then, and still is happening. It is almost impossible for an individual, or school, to keep abreast.

The aim is to spotlight truly remarkable and sometimes mystifying Information Technology developments. The Schoolnet will be a guide in integrating IT in education. Those of us who are new to this field will find assistance and support here. Those who already have some experience will discover intriguing services and resources on this network. Another important role for the network is to be a forum. Here’s where you find other Swedish-and international-schools working with Internet specifically, and IT generally.

(http://www.skolverket.se/skolnet/english/index.html)
The Nordic Schoolnet (http://www.odin.dk/)
The European Schoolnet: (http://www.eun.org)

The Swedish Schoolnet is like a gold mine for both teachers and pupils especially in compulsory school. However most of the teachers knows about the Schoolnet but not so many uses it regular. My opinion is that The National Agency of Education should take more responsibility of teachers using The Schoolnet and not limit themselves only to developing and run it.

The Delegation for IT in Schools is responsible for implementing ”Tools for learning”, a national 3-year programme promoting the use of ICT in schools. The Delegation has been given the task by The Ministry of Education.

The programme consists of 7 parts whereof the major four are:

The costs for this programme are 160.000 Euro.

(http://www.itis.gov.se/english)

My opinion is that this programme is the best for the schools because it gives education, with IT into a pedagogical use, to politicians, the leadership, headmasters and teachers in every municipality.

Today

Many reports have been written about IT and learning. Everybody is agreed that the expected results have been less. Today there is no sure data that indicates on using computers as tools surely leads to results. Many investments without any pedagogical thought has not give expected results. Several criticisers mean that the school lies beyond the working life because of the old sluggish structures. The schools very strict working methods have to be radically changed. If the advantage with IT as a pedagogical tool will be reached must such factors as grouping of lessons, classrooms and grouping of subjects be changed.

See TELDOK report 125, for example. (http://www.teldok.framfab.se)

The Local Initiative

Sandviken was the municipality that first did a great take-off on IT in school.

I Jämtland was The Foundation of The Municipalities the part that early took initiative for IT in schools. Both Sandviken and Jämtland are supported by the Foundation of Knowledge and Competence.

Over the hole country municipalities have bought computers. In the beginning it was focused on computers for individual use. Later came the focus on local networks, Internet, e-mail etc. The education of teachers has been focused on using the technique. The expected results didn’t come.

Norrbotten

In the region of Norrbotten the supply of computers, networks and Internet is very good. I think it is this best supplied region in Sweden. There is as least 1 computer in each classroom in the lower classes, 1 computer/7–8 pupils in the upper classes and 1 computer/3–4 pupils in the upper secondary school. Furthermore there are computers in public domains in the schools, in smaller group rooms, in specially computer-rooms.

Every school in Norrbotten has access to Internet. There are 106 places with schools which everyone has possibilities to datacommunication with at least ISDN. The central place of the municipality has a connection of 2 Mbit/s to the regional network. It is a high-speed ATM-network without limit. Almost every school in the upper classes (7–9) and every secondary school have local networks. They are also connected with at least 512 kbit/s. Every pupil and teacher has access to an email address. I think that about 80% of them are individual. For example, Luleå has about 12.000 pupils and everybody has an individual e-mail address and the teachers too, of course. The administration is central and very much automated. (http://www.edu.lulea.se)

Every municipality has built a special network for the school separated from the administrative network.

The municipalities co-operate in building the infrastructure through their company IT Norrbotten.

Net Based Learning

Networks will in all probability be the largest intermediaries of knowledge. Knowledge that intermediaries with all media’s, audio, video, images and text. All pedagogical research shows that the more senses that activates within the learner in the learning situation, the better the learning will be. Net Based Learning as a complement allows pupils to study together with others or with other teachers. The network gives us the possibilities to study independent of place and time.

For sparsely populated areas like the county of Norrbotten, networked distributed education might be the future. If the Internet is the next industrial revolution, then Net Based Learning may be the next educational revolution.

During the lecture I will demonstrate lessons in Spanish distributed over Internet with multimedia, interactive tools in real-time with 12–13 years old pupils in the municipality of Jokkmokk.

Conclusion

The Swedish school, as it is describing in plans with its objectives, is a good establishment for implementing IT as a pedagogical tool. However the municipalities have not succeeded in reaching the objectives. Either they have not succeeded in implementing IT in the education as expected. In the end of 20th century, when everybody can read and count, knowledge about how to learn and knowledge about the most efficient way in acquire knowledge, IT must be used. Such knowledge is the prerequisite of lifelong learning. Using IT as a pedagogical tool in education is a prerequisite of realising the objectives in the Swedish school