Picking up the PISA? Teacher certification and student achievement in Sweden

Sammanfattning: In an effort to raise the status of teachers and increase the quality and equity of Swedish education by ensuring competent teachers, a national and subject-specific teacher certification was introduced in 2011, despite scant evidence in favor of teacher certification. This thesis attempts to answer the question: What effect do certified teachers in Sweden have on ninth grade student achievement? By applying fixed effects models to school-level panel data spanning the academic years 2014/2015-2018/2019, this study finds that certified teachers have significant and positive effects on student achievement in mathematics, at least in terms of standardized national test results. For the two other subjects studied, namely English and Swedish, no such effects are found. Consequently, teacher certification could be an effective way of boosting student achievement in certain subjects, whereas in others, it risks discouraging non-certified teachers of high quality from entering or remaining within the teaching profession. However, this thesis faces several limitations, why I encourage future research to further explore the relationship between teacher certification and student achievement within the Swedish context.