Posts Tagged ‘educational reform’

07
Dec
2018

Swedish School Reform

categories: announcement

A Cautionary Tale To Be Had From Swedish School Reforms

by  on 

https://www.socialeurope.eu/a-cautionary-tale-to-be-had-from-swedish-school-reforms

One of the issues dividing the two main parliamentary blocs is whether there should be a cap on profit margins for publicly funded private schools.

The Swedish school system has received considerable international attention in recent years due to alarming test scores in the OECD’s international PISA study

Segregation is one of the most serious social problems facing Sweden and many other wealthy nations.

A recent report (the English title would be “A Nation Divided – School Choice and Segregation in Sweden”) that I have co-authored for the Stockholm based think tank Arena Idé shows that well-educated and Swedish-born families increasingly opt out of schools where the children have parents with lower educational attainments and an immigrant background. We also show that this “white flight” in Swedish municipalities throughout the country is increased by school choice and other reforms introduced in the early 1990s, whereby publicly financed private schools are allowed to compete with municipal schools for school vouchers allotted to each individual student.

The results in our study should be viewed in light of two recent reports: one from the OECDand another from UNICEF, both highlighting the inequality in the Swedish school system.

The results make it painfully clear that the Swedish school system effectively works against the very idea that schools should level the playing field for students from all backgrounds and give every child equal opportunity. Even after the rise of right-wing populism in Sweden, our established political parties have proven themselves unable, or unwilling, to rein in the highly unregulated Swedish school market.

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more on educational systems
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=educational+system

16
Dec
2015

China educational reform

categories: educational technology, Project Based Learning, student-centered learning

A Shifting Education Model in China

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/china-education-system/420234/
The news was taken from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MindShift.KQED/posts/913192562049997. Here are the comments:

Marcin Zaród While at the same time in their kung-fu schools they have been using models like “station rotation”, “peer-learning”, “immediate feedback”, mastery learning, even some elements of gamification (like badges-like colour belts showing the mastery on some level and unblocking access to higher-level routines available only for the more advanced students), etc for hundreds of years…. And I am not joking. Just ask anybody who does some kung-fu under the watchful eye of a good coach (sifu).
A great example of a “peer learning” session on the enclosed photo (taken at a kung-fu training in Poland, not in China smile emoticon

China has now reshaped its national exam to focus on a broader range of topics and cognitive skills and, in turn, move away from teacher-dominated lecturing. The new test requires that students employ complex analytical skills, mixed with broader knowledge across various subjects.

This is exactly what Finland and the United Kingdom are aiming with the reforms in their education. In March 2015, this blog reported on a reform in Finland: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/03/24/education-reform-finland/, which is to be followed by the UK.