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The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

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Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#21

Post by corty »

UrsaMedius wrote: post #12
corty wrote: post #7

While I agree with the article about the problems of profit-driven schools, the whole situation (and the article in parts) points to a imho bigger problem in most education systems: Profit-driven schools cater to the more able, easier to educate and more intelligent pupils. Why can they do that? Because public schools almost everywhere insist on coeducation of the most and least gifted. This is severely holding back…

What you call "most and least gifted" is in my opinion better described as "most and least privileged". And coeducation of students of different levels of privilege just seems like a good thing, nothing that needs to be dealt with.

Of course higher intelligence is a privilege, as is higher sportive ability and other attributes given to you from birth. This includes your own personal attributes as well as the privilege that comes from your family's wealth and status. But actually, the word "privilege" muddles the waters, because those are two very different things.

I agree that schools should not differentiate based on families' status and wealth. Schools should treat poor and rich children the same.

However, schools should never treat stupid and intelligent children the same. Not everyone is cut out to be a rocket surgeon. But your argument means that we should hold back all future rocket surgeons and bring them to a lower level of privilege, i.e. dumb them down. This is neither in the interest of the children (stupid as well as intelligent ones) nor is it in the interest of society. We do need rocket surgeons...

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#22

Post by gedy »

UrsaMedius wrote: post #12
corty wrote: post #7

While I agree with the article about the problems of profit-driven schools, the whole situation (and the article in parts) points to a imho bigger problem in most education systems: Profit-driven schools cater to the more able, easier to educate and more intelligent pupils. Why can they do that? Because public schools almost everywhere insist on coeducation of the most and least gifted. This is severely holding back…

What you call "most and least gifted" is in my opinion better described as "most and least privileged". And coeducation of students of different levels of privilege just seems like a good thing, nothing that needs to be dealt with.

No, you can also be underprivileged and gifted/talented (assuming you mean economic or racial privilege).

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#23

Post by brtkdotse »

leereeves wrote: post #16
brtkdotse wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See ‘cost_of_marketing’.

If the marketing is misleading, couldn't students just go back to their old schools?

In theory, yes, but it’s not like changing internet providers - kids have friends, commuting might be harder. Not something you do on a whim.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#24

Post by cloudfifty »

leereeves wrote: post #9
brtkdotse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a mathematical agenda, I can’t get the following to balance: Municipal: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs = 0 Private: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs - cost_of_marketing = profit

The author claims that "the corporation schools can reduce salaries, teacher density, resource staff." Though that claim makes me wonder how these schools attract students. The "independent students" and their parents must not be too happy with the municipal schools if understaffed private schools are an appealing alternative.

They appeal to privileged students with well-educated parents. There's also a queue system in place to these schools which have many years waiting time, further segregating "active" parents from "inactive" parents. These students require less resources to educate and thus generate more profit.

Also the students are now customers, and should ofc be made happy to give good ratings, which has caused grades to be inflated beyond the students actual results on standardized tests.

Furthermore these schools generally market themselves as "international schools" with English as the primary language, making them able to use a loop hole in the law to employ cheaper non-licensed teachers from abroad.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#25

Post by rndgermandude »

leereeves wrote: post #9
brtkdotse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a mathematical agenda, I can’t get the following to balance: Municipal: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs = 0 Private: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs - cost_of_marketing = profit

The author claims that "the corporation schools can reduce salaries, teacher density, resource staff." Though that claim makes me wonder how these schools attract students. The "independent students" and their parents must not be too happy with the municipal schools if understaffed private schools are an appealing alternative.

They weed out hard-to-teach students, the author says, which means it will drive down the cost of teaching in private schools (less "hand holding" of bad students means fewer teachers required) while raising the cost in municipal schools at the same time, because the municipal schools basically get all the "bad students" which require additional hand holding.

Furthermore, if you outright reject "bad students" - where "bad" may mean intellectually bad, socially bad, bad economic background, disabled ("with diagnosis"), etc - then you can later claim in your marketing materials that students in your private school are performing above average.

It probably will also lower administrative burden, as the "easy" students are less likely to get in major trouble, are less likely to need involvement of the school and child protected services in their lives, the teachers go to court as a witness in child abuse cases less, etc.

And of course, you can always simply pay teachers less than in municipal schools - which is one of the claims of the author as well.

And the last claim the author made is that a lot of these companies just hire some under-qualifiied teachers whenever they can get away with it.

I have to admit, the author makes a lot of sense to me.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#26

Post by joshuaissac »

> The business model is simple: you buy smaller independent schools and incorporate them into the growing groups and then make a profit by targeting marketing to easy-to-teach, independent students [...] With a sold-out, simpler student base, the corporation schools can reduce salaries, teacher density, resource staff

> When the profitable students have been absorbed by the independent school, the municipal school is left with a more difficult student base

This is the gist of the article, that private entities are driving up the government's cost of education by attracting cheaper-to-teach students and then claiming the government funding allocated to those students. The municipality is then left to teach the harder-to-teach students. The funding per student is presumably averaged, so this is similar to the concept of privatising the profits and socialising the losses.

But is there anything stopping the municipalities themselves from competing in the same way? A group of municipalities could also pool resources to reduce costs and attract cheaper-to-teach students.

I think the article focuses too much on private profit, with only a small paragraph each about how the independent schools are given an unfair information advantage, and how some of them are controlled by religious extremists:

> National Agency for Education made all statistics about individual schools secret

> a school system that increases segregation and allows jihadist schools run by people with links to Islamism and violent extremism

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#27

Post by kryogen1c »

i dont know about the social political education politics of sweden, but the generalized issue is the unanswered question:

what is education for?

the problem with involving a free market (issues like regulatory capture and misregulation notwithstanding) is that if the product isnt clear, the market output may not be desirable and could be quite malformed. as yogi berra said, if you dont know where youre going, you might not get there.

education serves at least 4 purposes:

-socialized child care

-socialized child feeding

-vocational training

-general education

point four is not well defined and point three is often never defined (who's whole education track is special built for a job they are guaranteed?)

given these parameters, what is the expected output of a free market optimization? as we'd say about bad calculations in the navy: garbage in, garbage out.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#28

Post by timkam »

brtkdotse wrote: post #5
techpression wrote: post #2

Most people with a non-political agenda would agree that the problems with the Swedish school system began when it was handed over to the municipalities from the state, I don’t think there has been a successful migration of responsibilities like this ever in the history of the country. We then had to suffer years of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and choice superseded traditional curriculum…

I have a mathematical agenda, I can’t get the following to balance: Municipal: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs = 0 Private: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs - cost_of_marketing = profit

Private schools have more leverage on whom they will accept as pupils and hence can target an "easier to teach" part of the overall pupil population.

To me the Swedish system is the worst of two worlds: in Germany, there are good public schools for well-performing students; the problem is that affluent parents typically make sure their children are classified as "well-performing" (roughly speaking; there is a lot of wiggle room). This is somewhat unfair, but facilitates to some extent the development of pupils with reasonably high potential. In other Scandinavian countries, the state provides enough resources to have small class sizes in which pupils of all abilities get educated together. This is fair but can hamper the development of high-potential children (teachers still have limited time and attention). In Sweden, the distribution of resources as criticized by the article facilitates that pupils in need don't receive special support and high-potential children get their education in for-profit institutions for pseudo-elites where a teacher is discouraged to give tough feedback because it can hurt the organization's bottom line.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#29

Post by bjornsing »

> While schools and colleges are sounding the alarm about declining knowledge results, joy grades are rising, as grades have become a competitive tool on the market.

This in my opinion is the main problem. Take this "marketing tool" away from the private schools, and the rest of the problems are fixable (e.g. with diversified pupil compensation). But when you let a private business both grade themselves and sell entry to (free!) university, you will quickly have massive problems...

Up until the 70-ties or so there was a separate government agency responsible for final exams and grades. If we want to keep private schools (and I think we should at least try), then we need to reinstate that separation of education and evaluation, urgently. Problem is we now have a large swath of middle class parents who feel that they've been very smart and ensured a great future for their children by choosing the right school for them (and at least subconsciously they understand that the main reason is the inflated grades). They don't want that privilege taken away. There is no limit to the hypocrisy many people can accept if they feel it benefits their kids.

Source: I'm Swedish, but I don't have kids so not super knowledgeable. Just my impression after following the debate and talking to friends with kids.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#30

Post by corty »

brtkdotse wrote: post #18
HPsquared wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your equation misses an 'efficiency' parameter.

Ah, yes, the fabled “efficiency” of private companies. Where would you have me put it? On teachers salaries? On building costs?

On teacher selection.

In Germany, public school teachers are state officials, meaning they are completely impossible to get rid of (even after some kinds of criminal convictions). We literally had a teacher who wasn't allowed to teach the younger classes anymore, because he was prone to rudely abuse them. He taught the older pupils instead, who were thought to be more resilient to his abuse. Another teacher (biology and chemistry) was deeply religious and had a funny way (to say it mildly) of teaching evolution, procreation and sex ed. Which lead to her just being assigned chemistry classes, where she then had to limit herself to teaching photosynthesis "as the lord created it"...

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