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Decomposing grade inflation in Sweden's compulsory school

Nilsson, Elias LU and Liang, Sofie LU (2021) NEKH02 20211
Department of Economics
Abstract
In Swedish media, there has been a heated debate regarding the school system. Since 1992, free schools, which are similar to voucher schools, have been permitted as a competitor to municipal schools. This was combined with a new grading system where knowledge based criteria were implemented as opposed to the previous normally distributed grading system. Due to Sweden’s lack of standardised and centrally graded tests, schools have been suspected of increasing merit points (grades) without a measurable increase in knowledge in the system as a whole and in free schools in particular. Thus leading to the purpose of our thesis, which is measuring grade inflation in Swedish compulsory school.

This thesis uses the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition... (More)
In Swedish media, there has been a heated debate regarding the school system. Since 1992, free schools, which are similar to voucher schools, have been permitted as a competitor to municipal schools. This was combined with a new grading system where knowledge based criteria were implemented as opposed to the previous normally distributed grading system. Due to Sweden’s lack of standardised and centrally graded tests, schools have been suspected of increasing merit points (grades) without a measurable increase in knowledge in the system as a whole and in free schools in particular. Thus leading to the purpose of our thesis, which is measuring grade inflation in Swedish compulsory school.

This thesis uses the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to decompose the average grade differences for both the national tests and the final merit points given to pupils in grade 9 in order to separate reasonable differences from potential grade inflation. We find that there is a potential grade inflation between free schools and municipal schools when using variables collected by Skolverket and Statistics Sweden (SCB) ranging from about
18.00 to 34.63 percent depending on the test and variables used. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Nilsson, Elias LU and Liang, Sofie LU
supervisor
organization
course
NEKH02 20211
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
grade inflation, municipal schools, free schools, Sweden’s school system
language
English
id
9049738
date added to LUP
2021-07-05 13:35:23
date last changed
2021-07-05 13:35:23
@misc{9049738,
  abstract     = {{In Swedish media, there has been a heated debate regarding the school system. Since 1992, free schools, which are similar to voucher schools, have been permitted as a competitor to municipal schools. This was combined with a new grading system where knowledge based criteria were implemented as opposed to the previous normally distributed grading system. Due to Sweden’s lack of standardised and centrally graded tests, schools have been suspected of increasing merit points (grades) without a measurable increase in knowledge in the system as a whole and in free schools in particular. Thus leading to the purpose of our thesis, which is measuring grade inflation in Swedish compulsory school. 

This thesis uses the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method to decompose the average grade differences for both the national tests and the final merit points given to pupils in grade 9 in order to separate reasonable differences from potential grade inflation. We find that there is a potential grade inflation between free schools and municipal schools when using variables collected by Skolverket and Statistics Sweden (SCB) ranging from about
18.00 to 34.63 percent depending on the test and variables used.}},
  author       = {{Nilsson, Elias and Liang, Sofie}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Decomposing grade inflation in Sweden's compulsory school}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}