Cross-national achievement surveys and educational monitoring in Sweden

Abstract

Since international student achievement surveys were introduced in the 1960s, Sweden has participated in a large number of them. These surveys initially revealed unexpectedly low achievement levels in Sweden relative to other participating countries; however, there were some more positive findings and interpretations in the 1970s and 1980s. The results from the 1990s onwards have been more discouraging for Swedish educational policy and practice. In recent years,some improvements have been seen, although there is some controversy surrounding these interpretations. In Sweden ,international achievement surveys play an important role inframing political discussions about educational outcomes, and they are used for education policy monitoring. Nevertheless, it is hard to establish causal links between particular reforms and such uses of international achievement data. Moreover, the Swedish case illustrates how selective national uptake of these international measures is embedded in and contingent on contextual and historical national circumstances and reform trajectories.