The Swedish Grades through Modern Time : An Empirical Investigation on the Secondary Upper High School in Sweden

Sammanfattning: Studies reveal a variation in the effects on education outcome from various social, political, and economical factors. The constant change makes it challenging to collect relevant data, and yet estimate a precise model which would still be applicable after a period of time. The PISA report of 2012 revealed that the Swedish students’ knowledge had dropped for the first time below the average for the OECD countries, starting a large debate regarding the explanations of the result. This paper empirically investigates, with the use of two-way fixed effects, the impact on the outcome variable average grade by the continuous variables per-pupil spending, educated teachers, amount of students per teacher, foreign students, and educated parents over the years from 2002 to 2013. The data used showed a presence of multicollinearity and heteroscedasticity, and robust standard errors were produced. The results show a negative coefficient effect on the education outcome by the per-pupil spending -0.00269 (0.001), and a positive coefficient effect by educated teachers 0.00066 (0.012) and educated parents 3.16903 (0.423). The continuous variables amount of students per teacher and foreign students were statistically insignificant. A yearly effect was present where the statistically significant values ranged from 0.11699:0.27475. A large share of the outcome proved to follow previous studies, whereas the deviants could partly be explained by structural changes in the Swedish schools, and grade inflation. The subjective nature of the outcome variable was however questioned as the schools’ themselves graded and reported the results. The paper provides a modern analysis of patterns for the Swedish students, municipalities, and interested to further investigate the underlying structure and problems.