Grades in Swedish primary school is not the answer!

According to recent studies Swedish children are lagging behind in subject knowledge when comparing to other European countries. This has made the government react and several of the Swedish parties are now considering to introduce grades earlier in the Swedish school to break these trends. Instead of giving Swedish students their first grade in year 8, the new proposal is to grade the students from year six, and even make it possible to give even as early as in year 1.

The purpose with these changes is of course to increase the standard in school and make children learn more. This may seem as reasonable idea, but grades themselves will not however increase the amount of knowledge the children acquire. Introducing grades earlier in primary school will not create a better school; instead earlier grades can have the opposite effect.

There are, despite good intention several reason to why introducing grades earlier than today is bad idea. First of all, grades are for many students associated with stress. Several studies show that stress among children and minors are increasing today. The reason for this stress often has to do with school. To introduce grades earlier in school would introduce stress among children earlier, and stress is preferably something to avoid in a good learning environment.

Another disadvantage of introducing grades earlier would also be that children unavoidable would start to compare their grades with each other. This would further result in a unhealthy competition among the children, where they soon would be able to divide themselves into “good” or “bad” students, which would be inciting for some (the “good” students) and devastating for others (the “bad” students). To separate graded performances from the student’s self- worth can be hard enough to do for youngsters in 8^th grade, for younger children it is even harder.

There is of courser more views to this matter than those listed above. One of the strongest arguments for introducing grades earlier in school is that grades would increase children’ s knowledge level in all subjects. It is true that grades can motivate some children to learn more, but if increasing the children’s level of knowledge is the goal, smaller classes and more teachers would have be more effective than grading students.

Another argument that supporters of this proposal may have is that grades would help parents to understand how their child/ children are doing in school. This however is not something that parents necessarily only can understand thorough grades, which actually gives quite poor idea of how the child really is developing. More informative and important is instead the teacher- parent meetings were teacher and parents can discuss the child’s development.

The last and most important argument that the supporters of this claim may have is that grades would make it easier to the find weak students earlier and be able to give them the accurate help as early as possible. Grades is however not the solution to this problem. Teachers today are well aware of what their pupils know or do not. The problem is rather that the teachers with as large groups as they have today, do not have the time or resources to help them.

To introduce grades earlier than today would probably make some students more motivated in school. For the majority however would the effect be the opposite. Grades do not themselves increase knowledge, find weak students earlier or helps parents to understand, smaller groups and more teachers however do. Introducing grades earlier in school will not create a better school.