The government is tearing up the Swedish National Agency for Education’s plan for digital tools

When Education Minister Lotta Edholm received the Swedish National Agency for Education’s new plan for digitizing the Swedish preschool and school in November last year, she thought that some crucial pieces of the puzzle were missing.

She knew that Swedish brain researchers and paediatricians had warned against introducing digital tools too early and could not find anything about this in the National Education Agency’s writings.

This led her to send the proposal for referral, not only to brain researchers and pediatricians, but to a further 58 referral bodies.

The work of compiling these referral responses is currently in full swing at the Government Office.

– When I go through this can you say that my fears have been confirmed one hundred percent by the referral responses, which express exactly what I warned about, that there is very little science that supports this development, says Lotta Edholm.

Among other things, there are reports that children understand more if they read real books and that they learn more if they write by hand.

– In a way, it feels sad that the National Board of Education has not listened to these experts. But on the other hand, I am happy that I made the decision to send the proposal for referral, says Lotta Edholm.

DN has met representatives for two of the referral bodies that Lotta Edholm singled out as most important for the decision: Ulrika Ådén who is a professor and pediatrician at Astrid Lindgren’s children’s hospital, and Torkel Klingberg who is a professor of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute.

We meet at Karolinska Hospital’s play therapy department where there are neither screens nor digital toys. Only real balls and buckets and a real sandbox.

– We know that children learn a lot by exploring environments like this with their senses. It is the best way to stimulate the brain and facilitate learning, says Ulrika Ådén, who is also chairperson of the Swedish Association of Pediatricians.

Play is important for interaction with others. It develops language and the brain’s ability to imagine what other people want, she continues.

The meaning of the new digitization strategy is, according to the Swedish National Agency for Education, that all children should develop digital competence. This should lead to them being able to participate actively in studies and community life and in the long run contribute to a sustainable and democratic society.

According to the Swedish National Agency for Education, the quality of teaching must also improve with the help of digital tools.

– But if you want to achieve all these things, you must invest in learning, and the organ responsible for it is the brain. But they don’t even mention it in their new strategy, says Ulrika Ådén.

The small children, up to the age of two, should not use screens at all, according to the recommendations of the Association of Pediatricians. Since many children start preschool when they are one year old, and virtually all children have access to screens at home, preschool should be completely screen-free, according to the pediatrician association.

Children who are between two and five years old can use screens for no more than one hour a day, which is also the WHO’s recommendation.

– But then you should arrange not to have them in the preschool at all because you can be sure that they are in the home.

One reason why the Association of Pediatricians is critical of the Swedish National Agency for Education’s writings that children in preschool should develop digital skills is that so-called digital toys provide faster rewards. This means that they easily outcompete the manual game.

– The risk is that children stay inside instead of going out to play, which affects the brain and health in a negative way, explains Ulrika Ådén.

The National Education Agency’s advice can also make it more difficult for parents to resist and follow the advice to reduce screen time, she believes.

In the consultation response from the Karolinska Institute, a group of brain researchers directs similar criticism against the Swedish National Agency for Education’s failure to take on board the research that shows that digital tools impair children’s acquisition of knowledge – which they believe is the school’s very basic mission.

– The Swedish school has problems already as it is. Then adding the further deterioration that digitization risks leading to can have serious consequences, says Torkel Klingberg, one of the authors of the consultation response.

He brings up several studies that show how screens and tablets lead to poorer attention and learning, including an OECD study that shows that countries that used what is called “inquiry-based teaching” performed worse in Pisa measurements.

It is about how students learn to skim through material instead of absorbing things in depth, how screens disrupt the ability to concentrate and how students who have their computers open during lectures perform worse.

In its strategy, the Swedish National Agency for Education says that equality in school can be improved if schools use digital aids. But the KI researchers highlight the opposite.

The negative effects on learning risk especially affecting children who have concentration difficulties, or who do not have supportive parents who can compensate for the time the child spent watching YouTube or playing games, instead of listening to the teacher, they write.

According to the Swedish National Agency for Education, digitalisation can lead to business increasing its innovative power. But writings about students having to “learn to handle a digital camera” express a naive view, say the KI researchers.

Instead, they highlight the importance of training teachers so that they are able to develop students’ competence regarding specific subjects, “not by implementing non-evidence-based digitization of the school”.

Lotta Edholm agrees with the criticism and says that she has decided to dismantle the Swedish National Agency for Education’s strategy, which she believes is largely based on “purely wrong thinking”.

Sweden’s Riksdag has decided that Sweden should be the world’s best in digitization. Does this mean you want to abandon that goal?

– Absolutely not. But the school must be a school, where knowledge must be the focus, and not serve as some kind of subcontractor to some other goal, she says.

– It is believed that digitization is driven by children as young as possible having access to digital tools. But I don’t believe it for a moment. If children don’t learn to read or count properly, we won’t be the world’s best at digitization either.

The Karolinska Institute writes in its consultation response that the government should set the requirement that the Swedish National Agency for Education works from now on based on evidence and takes relevant research into account when writing reports and recommendations.

Is it something you intend to perform?

– Yes, it is hugely important and applies to the entire school’s operations. There are requirements in the Education Act that teaching must be based on science and proven experience.

So what happens now?

– We have to make a review compilation. 60 referral responses have been received, so it is extensive work.

The government will then come back with how a new digital strategy should be designed for preschools and schools.

– Not having a strategy is not an option. Then there is a risk that this will just continue in the old ruts, without the knowledge and research on this that actually exists today having made no impression.

Read more:

Researchers warn against introducing computers into schools too early

School was forced to back off from screen-free lessons