DEBATE, the article was published in UNT 10/5-2021. Read the article at UNT.se here
In the January agreement, the Social Democrats, the Centre Party, the Liberals and the Green Party agreed to reform teacher training with the aim of strengthening quality. The government has now presented a memorandum containing a number of proposals aimed at raising quality, including higher requirements for the number of teaching hours.
Teacher education is Sweden's largest vocational education with just over 20,000 applicants and almost 9000 degrees per year. Good teacher education requires that students put theory into practice, which requires a lot of time between teachers and students. It is therefore good that the government has said that it intends to follow up on the number of teaching hours in teacher education, but the only problem is that the inquiry's proposal will not achieve higher quality as it overlooks the fundamental problem.
The financing of higher education suffers from systemic flaws. Funding is not based on the actual costs of educating students, and over time, funding increases have not matched cost increases. Since the current funding system for higher education was introduced in the early 90s, university funding has not kept pace with cost increases. Teacher education is one of the areas of education where the problems are most evident, and teacher education has been underfunded for many years.
The remuneration for the educational field “Teaching” has lagged behind more than any other educational field. During the period 1999–2019, the allocation increased by 34 percent per student. According to Statistics Sweden’s implicit index for government consumption, costs increased by a full 68 percent during the same period. Inflation is therefore twice as high as the allocation increases. It goes without saying that the business is negatively affected when the allocations are eaten up by increased premises costs and salaries. Today’s remuneration must increase significantly for teacher training to have the same conditions as in the late 1990s.
Teacher training courses certainly also include subject courses that are not categorized as teaching, but many of these are reimbursed according to the lowest price tag (HTJS) which includes studies in the humanities and social sciences. This has not been taken into account in the calculations of education appropriations.
Even when the new financing system was introduced in the early 90s, the compensation amounts were based on old calculations. Changes in technology, teaching methods or who is included in the student group itself have not had an impact on the financing. And so it has had to continue, each year the compensation amounts are determined based on the previous year without further thought. It is the inadequate financing of certain educational areas that leads to teacher training receiving less teacher-led time and worse conditions.
In such a situation, it is not enough to impose increased demands on teaching time. It is to set demands without giving universities and colleges the conditions to actually implement them, which leads to unwanted side effects.
It is time to address the fundamental problem, funding. Higher quality depends on student teachers being given more teaching hours, and this in turn requires higher compensation. Politicians must stop turning a blind eye to the obvious – that quality comes at a cost. We demand that responsible politicians take responsibility and increase compensation, that is the only way we can increase the quality of teacher training.
Simon Edström, Chairman of the Swedish Federation of Swedish Students (SFS)
Rebecca Linderholm, SFS representative in SUHF's expert group on teacher education issues
Johanna Jaara Åstrand, Chairwoman of the Teachers' Union
Maria Guthke, Chairwoman of the Student Teachers' Union