Grades awarded in Swedish compulsory schools may not carry the same value across different schools, according to a new thesis from Uppsala University. The research suggests that for-profit independent schools award higher grades than statistically expected given their pupils’ backgrounds and local circumstances, potentially giving pupils from wealthier households an advantage when competing for places in popular upper secondary programmes.
Grades play a central role in Sweden’s education system, where pupils are selected for upper secondary programmes based on merit ratings assigned by their teachers. For this system to operate fairly, the same grade should have approximately the same meaning regardless of the school where it was awarded.
However, average grades in Sweden have increased in recent years, while improvements in external measures of academic attainment have sometimes been considerably weaker.
“If grades are to be used to rank pupils, we must be able to trust that they are comparable. My research shows that for-profit independent schools achieve above-average grades; in other words, the schools’ average grades are higher than would statistically be expected given the pupils’ backgrounds and local circumstances,” says Tommie Rappe Petersson, a PhD student at the Department of Education at Uppsala University.
Parents’ Education Has a Stronger Connection to Grades
In his thesis, Grades in the School Market, Rappe Petersson examines final grades in Swedish compulsory schools between 1998 and 2022. Using Swedish register data, he tracks changes over more than two decades and compares pupils across municipal schools and different types of independent schools.
The findings show that the relationship between parents’ educational attainment and pupils’ final grades has strengthened over time. This relationship is also consistently strongest in municipalities where independent schools account for a larger share of local school provision.
Rappe Petersson notes that schools are expected to compensate for differences in pupils’ home circumstances and help children from less academically advantaged backgrounds succeed. However, the findings raise questions about how effectively schools fulfil this responsibility in municipalities with a greater presence of independent schools.
For-Profit Independent Schools Award the Highest Grades
An in-depth analysis covering 2014 to 2022 compared pupils’ grades in municipal and independent schools while accounting for factors including gender, migration background, parental education, family income and local circumstances.
Both for-profit and non-profit independent schools awarded higher grades on average than municipal schools. For-profit independent schools recorded the highest grades, although substantial differences also existed between individual independent school companies.
The research also identified differences in staffing and resources. Compared with municipal schools, independent schools had fewer teachers and guidance counsellors per pupil, a lower proportion of certified teachers, and fewer teachers with qualifications in special education. Teacher salaries were also lower, and fewer pupils had access to school libraries.
These findings suggest that higher grades do not necessarily indicate better teaching.
“Higher grades cannot be taken as an automatic indication of better teaching. The results suggest that grading is more lenient in independent schools, particularly the for-profit ones. This is why grading practices need to be monitored and reviewed in both municipal schools and independent schools.”
Eskilstuna Shows a Significant Grading Gap
The municipality of Eskilstuna stood out in the analysis. Between 2014 and 2022, almost one in three school leavers attended a for-profit independent school there.
After accounting for differences in pupils’ backgrounds, those attending for-profit independent schools had an average advantage of approximately 25 merit-rating points over pupils in municipal schools in the same municipality. According to the study, this difference is equivalent to a pupil improving from a C to an A in five different subjects. It was the largest grading advantage among the municipalities examined.
The broader pattern was also observed in municipalities that together accounted for 91 per cent of school leavers across the 84 municipalities surveyed.
The researchers further found that where the grading advantage for pupils at for-profit independent schools was larger, pupils whose parents had both high educational attainment and high household incomes also enjoyed a greater advantage.
“The results suggest that inflated grades may reinforce the head start enjoyed by pupils from high-income households. School has an explicit mandate to promote equality. We must be able to support those who are struggling, so that everyone has a fair chance of succeeding in their studies. This pattern points in the opposite direction.”
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