How much should the screens occupy in schools? Is its use affecting the acquisition of skills considered essential? Are differences created between centers? Is the data obtained with a digital medium reliable? For some months, this is the debate in Sweden. The place that screens and digital technology should occupy in schools, including exposure time, something that has been questioned by health professionals. And it is in line with the decision adopted by the Barcelona City Council for its nursery schools, eliminating technological devices from the classrooms.
As a result of this debate, the new Minister of Education, Lotta Edholm, has postponed the strategy of the National School Education Agency (Skolverket) in its digital plan, which was presented in December 2022. So, the minister already wrote in an article against the "uncritical attitude that considers digitalization as something good, regardless of its content", which leads to "putting aside" textbooks, which, according to what he pointed out, have "advantages that no tablet can replace".
The minister does not deny the learning of children's digital competence, she does not eliminate the screens, but she is not going to invest more in technology and puts the emphasis on paper. “The Pirls report (on reading comprehension) is a sign that we have a reading crisis in Swedish schools. In the future, the Government wants to see more textbooks and less screen time in school."
Sweden, a country of 10 million inhabitants, obtained a score of 544 in the Pirls 2021 Report, placing it above the European average (528), the Spanish (522) and the Catalan (507). But this figure has fallen 11 points compared to the 2016 report.
As advanced, the fact that students learn to read and understand what they read is a prerequisite for global learning and in educational centers the focus on this objective is losing. In his opinion, it is worrying that reading ability is declining among children and young people, so Swedish schools need to go back to basics. "You have to focus on basic skills such as reading, writing and calculation," Edholm recently said according to some Swedish newspapers.
To remedy the situation, the center-right government announced on May 15 that it will unlock 685 million crowns (60 million euros) this year and 500 million (44 million euros) annually in 2024 and 2025, to accelerate the return from textbooks to schools. "This is part of the return of reading to school, to the detriment of screen time," warned the minister. The objective is to guarantee one book per student and per subject. Likewise, the government has invested specific economic items destined to the purchase of didactic school material and, specifically, the equivalent of about 4 million euros to reinforce the development of language, reading and writing.
Various studies underline that the paper format is better than the digital one in learning to read, according to the professor of Education at the University of Barcelona, Enric Prats. “We know that what helps the most is reading on paper, calm, long and if it is accompanied by the voice, much better”, he points out. However, he doubts that the switch from digital to book will solve reading comprehension by itself. In his opinion, this is an aspect that is the responsibility of all teachers (not only the language teacher) and that would help generate a habit of reading in children, even knowing that it is an objective that will not be achieved in all of them.
In addition to returning to essential learning such as reading, the Swedish government also wants the teacher to focus on their teaching work. The Ministry of Education announced on Wednesday the creation of a commission to analyze the bureaucratic burden of teachers. "Schools suffer from the disease of documentation", asserted the minister who clarified that it is not a question of giving more classes in exchange, but of freeing up time so that teachers can "plan, review and carry out their teaching work, without being constantly stressed by other tasks.”
