Early years education: Sweden versus the UK Part 3 (of 3)

If someone tried to implement the Swedish preschool model in the UK or USA, how would you respond - praise them as a pioneer or accuse them of being an anarchist?

Yet a typical, bog-standard Swedish preschool produces confident, happy children who, despite their comparitively low literacy levels are so eager to learn that by the time they are 10 years old, they have overtaken their British counterparts and go on to excel both in higher education and in their careers.

Contrast that with UK and US school children. How happy, confident and eager to learn are they?

Our children are the ones who suffer most from the burden of SATs, who are constrained most by the demands of the national curriculum. They have to face long, boring days in woefully underfunded schools.

Teachers and support staff do their best and know what's needed but they cannot win this fight alone. We all need to join in demanding radical change.

The film's narrator asks, "Can we afford to invest as much as the Swedes do in preschool education?"

It's your tax money and your vote.
Let them know what you think.


Visit www.teachers.tv and register (for free) to download a higher quality version of this film and to see other excellent films about education.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• preschool
• nursery
• kindergarten
• SATs
• Motala
• children
• education
• democracy
• tax
• spending
• public
• services

[MikaelUmaN]

This makes me nauseated.

The program segment prints a false picture of some utopia that doesn't exist.

Yes, it's true that the school system has been well-funded and it's true that we don't place prestige on tests etc. in the early years.

It is also true that performance, especially in math, has gone down consistently. This is true for most western countries.

While I share many values portrayed in this video, they do not equal better education.

[TheReliquary]

Thanks for your insights Mikael! It's all relative isn't it? If you experience what passes for preschool education in the UK, the Swedish system IS utopian! But Sweden itself is no utopia.

For improving maths, maybe we need to look to Finland and see what they do? I've seen at first hand the shockingly bad maths abilities of many Swedish 16+ students. I suspect the solution to that problem lies outside the scope of this film (i.e. in primary & secondary maths education).

[ImpactTeachers]

This is amazing. The style is so needed in the UK and throughout the world.

Kudos to Sweden!

[digimastr101]

I so want to go to Sweden and talk to these teachers and parents. I would want to know if the people mind being taxed to pay for this. I am a preschool teacher with a degree. I am now a homemaker and teaching our 3yrold with three of her friends a couple times a week. This video has made me do a complete 360 turn.(smile) Thank you for sharing this with us.

[Deidaranx9]

*many children feel great pressure, and might lose faith in the system. Grades in 6th year would be the solution, I belive

[Deidaranx9]

I live in Sweden, and I think this system is great. I spent my younger years of school learning some maths, and some english, but mostly I learned how to be a good friend. I interacted with other children, and i grew confident of who I was, and whom I wanted to be at n early age. Letting children truly be playfull and creative can never ever go wrong. But things can go wrong later when children aren't graded untill your 8th year. This means you've only got two years to get used it, and many chi

[aryllia]

Oh, I think I know why the kids age 10-ish excels in literacy.

By them they'd be interested in TV shows with subtitles. Usually it's just films for smaller children that are dubbed, like Disney movies and that stuff.

Either way "big budget for many years" isn't really valid. They get a budget for one year and after that year they can't touch those money any more. If there's leftovers of the budget they can't store it for the next year or anything ;)

[kojimapie]

I'm in the UK and i learnt to read and write at age 4-5. Primary school (pre-school) was fine for me. It was High school that seemed to be lacking behind.

[wallenbergphoto]

This picture is sadly about to be destroyd here in Sweden. The New rightwing party is cutting taxes, State goverment, communual sectors are cutting down becuase of this. Soon we are going UK's way. If the old party could keep there politics and change it back to the way it was in the 80's things would be a lot better then today.

/Danny, Sweden.

[ensittare]

I grew up in the swedish ghetto, my pre-school was nothing like this, however this is pretty much how my youngest siblings pre-school look like, since my parents moved.

[FlaschMangaStudios]

I don't think it is when you start learning, it's more HOW you learn. My cousin who lives in Stockholm started to learn english in 1st grade and I ( who live in Malmö) started in 3rd grade. Now both of us turn 16 this year and we speak equaly good english ( my spelling can be worked on though)

[antek250000]

School learned me nothing, I've wasted my time. Most of thing I can do, I learned home with help of my mom and dad. Swedish system of education is Utopia! Childern live under totally control of goverment and clerks. I'm glad that i don't live in Sweden.

[swingdancinglolz]

perhaps another one of our problems is that teacher's put too much emphasis on the test because of state wide or national standards. that's something to consider i suppose. it's not over testing it's just testing in the wrong ways.