Opinion to the Ministry of Education: Fully digitize schools!

Introduction: Understand what's holding you back, appreciate the progress and look ahead!

It should go without saying that tomorrow's workforce should be prepared for a fully digitalized future already at school age. However, for a long time, a number of mechanisms in both education policy and school organization have had a restraining effect on school digitalization. These include the following:

• Digitizing any business is complicated and requires a long learning process.
• Schools have deeply rooted ways of both delivering education and procuring and implementing different kinds of support for education (school materials, teaching aids, etc.)
• The Swedish school system is highly decentralized, through its municipal management and the widespread existence of independent schools.
• There is widespread skepticism, not only among teachers and education policymakers, but also among parents (and therefore voters) that digital elements in education actually promote learning.

The first two points are universal, and are something that school systems around the world struggle with. The last two are more specific to Sweden.

It is easy to complain about the inertia of policies and school organization, and it is important - for the future prospects of students - to address them. However, the above mechanisms should be respected; they are entirely natural and not the result of deliberate 'stupidity' or backwardness on the part of various actors. There is therefore a great responsibility on those who work for more effective and future-oriented education with digitalization as a driving force to convince of the benefits of digitalization.

Nor should we ignore the great progress that has been made. The decentralized structure of the Swedish school system has provided opportunities for many schools, municipalities and independent school principals to try out new forms of teaching, and a rich tapestry of methods has been developed, such as writing to read, the flipped classroom and various kinds of collaborative teaching methods. An important task will therefore be to ensure that these positive examples are disseminated.

Respecting the inertia, and inspired by the positive examples, a national strategy for school digitization should focus on looking forward, and with conviction drive digitization to help achieve learning goals and to generally improve the conditions for students to develop and participate in the future digital society.

IT&Telecom companies