Illiteracy pervades Sweden

Sweden will count 1,000,000 illiterates in the year 2030, according to an estimate made on the basis of data collected by Statistic Sweden, published by the website www.friatider.se and picked up by www.zerohedge.com and rmx.news.

The cited sources say: "According to recent data published by Statistics Sweden, the number of illiterates in the Scandinavian country reached almost 780,000 in 2023, and the predictions are grim: by the end of the decade, this figure is expected to exceed one million. This phenomenon mainly affects people between the ages of 16 and 65 and puts considerable pressure on Sweden's educational and social system."

Analysts and education officials have drawn attention to the risks associated with this crisis. "If the trend continues, we risk losing a whole generation of young people who will become functionally illiterate," warn Johan Pehrson, Minister of Education, and Lotta Edholm, Minister of Education and Innovation, in a recent debate article. That is why, starting in autumn 2028, primary schooling in Sweden will be extended from nine to ten years, according to a recent announcement by the government in Stockholm. The large group from the kindergarten will become the first class in the primary cycle, a measure considered essential in the fight against illiteracy.

According to the Swedish publication, foreigners who migrated to the Scandinavian countries had a major impact on the increase in illiteracy. The cited source states that many of the new residents come from countries with high illiteracy rates, such as Somalia, where the official illiteracy rate is 62.2 percent. Since 2015, Sweden has granted citizenship to a significant number of migrants from non-EU countries, most of them from Muslim countries. Syria and Somalia take the top spots among new Swedish citizens, with 147,579 and 53,543 citizens granted respectively.

These immigrants, often without formal education or the ability to read and write in their own language, become a burden on the Swedish education system. According to FriaTider journalists, in some cities, such as Malmö, Swedish children have become a minority in schools, and discussions about teaching in Arabic instead of Swedish have begun to emerge, which could exacerbate the problem of integration and literacy.

In an attempt to combat this situation, the Swedish government implemented the measure of extending compulsory schooling to ten years. However, the results so far are worrying. According to the data of 2024, approximately 20,000 students failed to complete compulsory schooling, which will significantly affect their chances of employment and social integration. Anna Castberg, head of department at the Swedish Education Agency, states that parents with a low level of education directly influence their children's school performance. This correlation is particularly evident among non-Western migrant families, where the educational gaps between them and Swedes are widening.

The Swedish authorities also show that the problem of illiteracy is not only limited to the educational aspect, but has direct implications on the Scandinavian country's economy. An educated and well-trained workforce has always been a central pillar of the Swedish economy, especially in high-tech sectors. Under these conditions, the decline in recent years in performance in international tests, such as PISA, affects the country's competitiveness on the global market. In this regard, the cited sources also recall the scandal of 2020, when the results of Sweden's PISA tests were manipulated by excluding foreign-born students from the test, which led to a false progress in educational performance.