The Revision of the Grading Criteria for English in Swedish Upper Secondary School in 2021 : A qualitative document study

Sammanfattning: This document study aims to facilitate an understanding of the differences between the grading criteria for English 5, 6, and 7 (in Swedish upper secondary school) before 2021 and after. It also aims to facilitate an awareness of reactions to the changes among actors within the educational system. The study investigates Swedish documents published online by The Swedish National Agency for Education as well as Swedish articles including reactions from teachers, a professor, and a chairperson of a teachers’ union. The first part of the studied material contains documents showing the old and the new grading criteria as well as documents containing explanations of why the changes were made, from The Swedish National Agency for Education. The other part of the material consists of four articles from four different journals for educators, with reactions from a total of seven different people. The method of the study was content analysis. The results from the study show that aspects of knowledge and details were removed from the grading criteria. For example, the knowledge criterion of students using different strategies when listening and reading was moved to core content. The major reason for changing the grading criteria was to make them clearer. Opinions from a few of the people in the study were that the changes will not matter because they were not big enough and that the changes have not made the grading criteria clearer. However, several people thought that the grading criteria have become clearer, and one person thinks that they will help teachers to carry out a better overall assessment.