Education at a Glance is the authoritative source of information on the state of education worldwide. It offers comprehensive data on the structure, financing, and performance of education systems across OECD countries and partner economies. This publication features more than 100 charts and tables that present key insights into the output of educational institutions, the impact of learning across countries, access and participation in education, financial investment in education, and the roles of teachers and school organisation. This country note provides an overview of the key characteristics of the education system in Sweden. In line with this year’s thematic focus, it focus on teacher shortages while also covering other parts of the education system.

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025 evaluates what students know and can do in science, reading, mathematics and computational problem-solving, assessing how effectively they can apply their knowledge to real-world challenges. The assessment also explores a range of broader competencies, attitudes and behaviours, including curiosity, perseverance and the use of artificial intelligence. PISA results provide valuable insights into the quality and equity of learning outcomes around the world, enabling educators and policymakers to learn from each other’s policies and practices. This country note provides a country-specific overview of Sweden.

This report examines students’ learning experiences in Sweden in relation to digital technologies and school disciplinary climate and safety, drawing on an in-depth analysis of PISA 2022 results and insights from authorities and stakeholders. It focusses on how 15-year-old students experience their learning environment and how these experiences may be associated with learning outcomes and well-being. Sweden’s education system is characterised by strong values of equity, trust and local autonomy. It benefits from high levels of digital access and generally positive relationships between students and teachers. At the same time, the report highlights persistent challenges, including classroom disruptions, differences in students’ sense of safety and uneven pedagogical use of digital tools across schools. By placing student experiences alongside governance and resource arrangements, the report offers an international perspective on key strengths and areas that merit reflection. It highlights associations between learning environments, digital practices and school climate, and differences in student outcomes and well-being. The report is intended for policymakers, education leaders, researchers and practitioners interested in strengthening learning environments in decentralised education systems and in using international evidence to inform national discussions on equity, quality and student well-being.

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) has the potential to address a range of goals, yet delivering on the potential of ECEC requires a workforce that is equipped and motivated to meet the unique demands of facilitating young children’s development, learning and well-being. The OECD Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS Starting Strong) focuses on the ECEC workforce. In 2024, ECEC staff and leaders in 17 countries and subnational entities shared insights into a wide range of topics, including their working conditions, professional development opportunities and their work with young children.

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the world’s largest survey of teachers and principals. In 2024, educators from 55 education systems provided information about what they do and how they are doing. They explain if and how they use artificial intelligence, why they became teachers and if they wish to continue teaching. Governments use data from TALIS to make policies that improve teaching and learning conditions in their schools.

The Survey of Adult Skills offers unique insights on adults’ proficiency in literacy, numeracy, and problem solving. These skills are crucial for both personal and societal success, and form the foundation for continuous learning and innovation. In 2022-23, the survey assessed adults aged 16-65 in 31 countries and economies. By comparing results over time and with those of other participating countries and economies, participants can track the skill levels of its adult population, pinpoint barriers to skill development and use, and craft effective policies to address these challenges.

This report, linked with the Digital Education Outlook 2023, provides an overview of 29 countries' (or jurisdictions') digital education ecosystem and governance. Each chapter covers the devolution of responsibilities within countries; how it affects digital education; what digital tools for management and teaching and learning are made publicly available to schools, teachers and students; how they are provided or procured; how countries ensure the security, privacy, equity and effectiveness of this digital ecosystem while keeping incentives for private education technology (EdTech) companies. The information and analysis are based on a survey on digital education infrastructure and governance, interviews with national and regional government officials as well as desk-based research. Providing for the first time a holistic view of 29 countries' and jurisdictions' digital education ecosystem and governance, this report will be of interest to policy makers, academics and education stakeholders interested in the digital transformation of education at home and internationally.

The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) examines what students know in reading, mathematics and science, and what they can do with what they know. It provides the most comprehensive and rigorous international assessment of student learning outcomes to date. Results from PISA indicate the quality and equity of learning outcomes attained around the world, and allow educators and policy makers to learn from the policies and practices applied in other countries. This country note provides a country-specific overview of Sweden.

The Early Childhood Education and Care in a Digital World project was initiated to support countries and jurisdictions in investigating ways in which ECEC can respond to digitalisation, harnessing opportunities to promote high-quality and equitable early childhood education and care (ECEC) while minimising associated risks. The evidence base for the project includes responses to a policy survey, a collection of case studies across participating countries and jurisdictions, literature reviews from academic experts, and desk-based research carried out by the OECD Secretariat. The project’s final report, Empowering Young Children in the Digital Age (2023), was published as part of the OECD Starting Strong series. Six countries (Canada, Finland, Japan, Korea, Norway and Sweden) engaged more actively in the project and its data collection. This country note provides an overview of key findings from the project as they relate specifically to digitalisation challenges and ECEC policy responses in Sweden.

This policy brief brings together key reflections from the Policy Dialogues in Focus: International Insights for School Funding Reform in Sweden. This seminar offered Swedish policy makers an opportunity to learn from the reform experiences of school funding policy specialists from peer education systems (Australia, United Kingdom and the Netherlands). It also provided them with insights into relevant international comparative and empirical perspectives from the OECD Secretariat. A new seminar series, the Policy Dialogues in Focus, establishes targeted policy dialogue events, driven by a country/group of countries and tailored to their specific needs. These seminars mobilise the knowledge base of the Education Policy Outlook and other relevant OECD expertise on targeted topics. Through an active stakeholder network of international senior policy makers, it also offers first-hand accounts of managing complex policy processes to help provide powerful peer learning experiences for policy makers looking for inspiration or insights from their international peers.

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the first international large-scale survey that provides a voice to teachers and school principals, who complete questionnaires about issues such as the professional development they have received; their teaching beliefs and practices; the assessment of their work and the feedback and recognition they receive; and various other school leadership, management and workplace issues. This note presents findings based on the reports of lower secondary teachers and their school leaders in mainstream public and private schools in Sweden.

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the first international large-scale survey that provides a voice to teachers and school principals, who complete questionnaires about issues such as the professional development they have received; their teaching beliefs and practices; the assessment of their work and the feedback and recognition they receive; and various other school leadership, management and workplace issues. This note presents findings based on the reports of lower secondary teachers and their school leaders in mainstream public and private schools in Sweden.

This policy profile on education in Sweden is part of the Education Policy Outlook series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across OECD countries. Designed for policy makers, analysts and practitioners who seek information and analysis of education policy taking into account the importance of national context, the country policy profiles offer constructive analysis of education policy in a comparative format. Each profile reviews the current context and situation of the country's education system and examine its challenges and policy responses, according to six policy levers that support improvement: students (how to raise outcomes for all in terms of 1- equity and quality and 2- preparing students for the future), institutions (how to raise quality through 3- school improvement and 4- evaluation and assessment), education system (how the system is organised to deliver education policy in terms of 5- governance and 6- funding).

The OECD Skills Outlook 2017 shows that skills matter for global value chains. The report presents new analyses based on the Survey of Adult Skills, a product of the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), and the Trade in Value Added Database. It develops a Scoreboard on Skills and Global Value Chains with the objective to measure the extent to which countries have been able to make the most of GVCs through the skills of their populations in terms of skills, global value chains, and social and economic outcomes. It also explains what countries would need to do to specialise in technologically advanced industries.

This background report, prepared as upstream work for the Starting Strong V publication, offers a description and analysis of Sweden's specific context and policies on the Transitions between ECEC and Primary Education, including : The transition system and its organization,professional continuity, pedagogical continuity, developmental continuity and the related main challenges.

How can Sweden reverse the decline in student performance and make sustained improvements in the quality and equity of its school system? This report analyses the strengths and challenges facing the Swedish school system from an international perspective, and provides a number of recommendations and policy actions to strengthen it. It highlights the need for a comprehensive education reform that will bring about system-wide change and raise the performance of all Swedish schools and their students. The reform should define priorities, establish clear responsibilities across the system, and consistently provide the appropriate support and challenge to schools, municipalities and private organisers in their efforts of improvement. This report will be valuable not only for Sweden, but also other education systems looking to raise their performance.

This short country note recaps some Background on the 2014 OECD Measuring Innovation in Education report, the main Key report findings on innovation in education, the Report approach to measuring educational system innovation, along with Sweden's top five organisational education innovations for the 2003-2011 period and Sweden's top five pedagogic education innovations for the same interval.

This case study examines the consequences of important education decentralisation reforms that took place in Sweden in the early 1990s. The sudden shift away from a traditionally centralised education system towards a decentralised one meant that municipalities had to quickly accommodate new responsibilities. Difficulties related to this shift were noticed early on and then confirmed by international surveys, in particular PISA, which revealed that student performance was deteriorating while the gap increased between and top- and bottom-performers. Key elements to this include the fact that decentralisation took place without enough support from the central authorities, municipalities (particularly smaller ones) lacked local capacity to manage their new responsibilities, and as a result the reform has resulted in a mismatch between official responsibilities and the actual powers of the various stakeholders. The central government, steering education at arm's length, has few tools to incentivise compliance with national goals. At the municipal level, financial resources are often allocated based on tradition and local politics rather than actual needs. This is in part due to misuse of available data and of expert knowledge by decision-makers. The case study also provides a series of recommendations for improvement.

This commentary on Sweden is one of a series of country reports on vocational education and training (VET) in OECD countries, prepared as part of the Skills beyond School study. The series includes reviews, involving an in-depth analysis of a country system leading to a set of policy recommendations backed by analysis. The commentaries are simpler exercises than full reviews, largely descriptive but also including an assessment of strengths and challenges in the country system. The commentaries are designed to be of value as free-standing reports, but are also prepared so that they can become the first phase of a full review.

This spotlight report draws upon the OECD report Equity and Quality in Education: Supporting Disadvantaged Students and Schools. The first section reproduces the executive summary of the report. The second section presents a snapshot of some variables on equity in education and school failure in Sweden based on the indicators used in the comparative report. It also outlines some recent policy developments and suggested policy options for Sweden, which are also informed by the Country Background Report prepared by Sweden.

How can student assessment, teacher appraisal, school evaluation and system evaluation bring about real gains in performance across a country's school system? This book provides, for Sweden, an independent analysis from an international perspective of major issues facing the evaluation and assessment framework in education along with current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches. This series forms part of the OECD Review on Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes.

By international standards, Sweden has an inclusive, democratic education system. However, immigrant students, on average, have weaker education outcomes than their native peers at all levels of education. The toughest challenges appear to be access to national programmes and completion in upper secondary education. Sweden is undertaking universal and targeted measures to improve the situation of immigrant students. There is scope to prioritise training of all teachers to be more responsive to the linguistic and cultural diversity of students; provide leadership training for school leaders to implement a "whole-school approach" to migrant education; strengthen induction programmes for the newly arrived students; support capacity building of municipality leaders so they can successfully exercise autonomy and innovation in migrant education in local contexts; prioritise alleviating negative effects of concentration on schooling outcomes with the whole-of government approach; and better use the available data to advance evidence-based policy and practice.

This is one in a series of country case reports prepared as part of the study on Digital Learning Resources as Systemic Innovation. The overall aim of the study is to review and evaluate the process of innovation involved in policies and public as well as private initiatives designed to promote the development, distribution and use of DLR for the school sector. In so doing, the activity will bring together evidence of: how countries go about initiating ICT-based educational innovations related to DLR, the players and processes involved, the knowledge base which is drawn on, and the procedures and criteria for assessing progress and outcomes; What factors influence the success of policies aimed at promoting ICT-based educational innovations, particularly those related to the production, distribution and use of DLR including user involvement in the production process and new actors such as the gaming industry and media companies; User-driven innovations related to DLR, carried out by learners and teachers, such as innovative production and use of DLR, and how the educational system responds to such innovations.

Sweden has a well-established VET system at upper secondary level, grounded on strong outcomes in basic schooling, with high-status VET tracks and modest rates of dropout. The challenges to the system include relatively high rates of unemployment for young people, an ageing workforce of school-based trainers, and very limited engagement by the social partners. This review of vocational education and training (VET) in Sweden is part of the OECD policy review of VET designed to help countries make their VET systems more responsive to labour market needs. The review in Sweden assesses the main challenges faced by the VET system and presents an interconnected package of six policy recommendations, presented in terms of the challenge, the recommendation itself, the arguments for the recommendation and suggested aspects of implementation.

The report provides an overview of school leadership developments and issues in Sweden, as a contribution to the OECD's Improving School Leadership Activity. It discusses the national context of schooling, the features of the school system, school governance and leardership, the attractiveness of school leaders' roles, and professional learning of school leaders in the country.

In the past decade the Swedish educational system has undergone some major changes, which have altered the nature and conditions of teacher's work. First, the level of decision-making and management of schools have become highly decentralized. Second, as a result of migration, cultural diversity has become an increasingly prominent feature of Swedish society, which increases the need to understand and respect different cultural identities. Teachers are therefore expected to possess broader socio-cultural skills in order to meet the need of individual pupils and prepare them for life in a multicultural society. Third, the traditional role of the teacher as un unquestionned authority, mainly responsible for providing tuition and transmitting information is no longer the case.The teacher must develop an ability to guide, supervise, and together with children critically review information and appraise different kinds of content. Nonetheless, they also must acquire a more cooperative role with parents and pupils. This report identifies and discuss these key issues.

The main purpose of the thematic review on adult learning is to understand adults' access and participation in education and training and to enhance policies and approaches to increase incentives for adults to undertake learning activities in OECD countries. It is a joint activity undertaken by the OECD Education Committee (EDC) and the Employment, Labour and Social Affairs Committee (ELSAC) in response to the need to make lifelong learning a reality for all, to improve learning opportunities of low skilled and disadvantaged adults and to sustain and increase employability.

This review covers children from birth to compulsory school age and includes the transition period into primary schooling. In order to examine thoroughly what children experience in the first years of life, the review has adopted a broad, holistic approach to study early childhood policy and provision. To that end, consideration has been given to the roles of families, communities and other environmental influences on children's early learning and development. Particular emphasis has been laid on aspects concerning quality, access and equity, with an emphasis on policy development in the following areas: regulations; staffing; programme content and implementation; family engagement and support; funding and financing.

The thematic review places young people's transition to work within a lifelong learning framework. The transition from initial education to work is only one of many transitions that young people will need to make throughout their lives. It is of critical importance, though, since the process by which young people move from education to work can influence the extent to which the benefits of education are retained, and opportunities for new learning are opened up. From this perspective, improving the transition to work means more than getting young people into jobs -- it also requires helping them to become effective learners throughout their adult lives.

The reviewers found tertiary education in Sweden to be in a vigorous state of growth and development. A combination of strong national policies and increased autonomy in institutions is the basis of developments in which both new national structures and regionally based innovations are marked features. Whilst acknowledging the continuing role of and innovations in the established universities, they took particular note of the development of the university colleges. These institutions are set to become major players as efforts continue to deliver tertiary education nation-wide, to an increasing proportion of the age group and a kind that addresses contemporary and likely future needs.