Lika chanser i gymnaiset? En studie om betyg, nationella prov och social reproduktion

The general confidence in equal opportunity and equivalent grades are crucial to the moral justification of the social stratification in the modern society, in which meritocracy holds a hegemonic status. In Sweden, a political aim has been that everybody should get upper secondary education, and the government has established a National Agency for Education to promote and control the quality in education and grading. The national assessments are devised by the National Agency of Education for supporting equivalence in grading across regions, schools and programmes. The thesis is based on an investigation, initiated by the National Agency for Education, of the national assessments as means for equivalent grading of upper secondary students in different programmes and schools. The investigation was motivated by the fact that statistics had indicated that the national assessments were used differently in different programmes and schools, and were considered to a different degree in the grading of students. It is based on interviews with teachers, students and principals in four upper secondary schools and four programmes, two theoretical programmes and two vocational. The sample included schools of different size, range of programmes and results. It included schools in cities as well as in rural areas. The results of the investigation demonstrated a great variation between programmes and schools concerning the quality and mode of instruction in the core courses and in instructional materials and tasks. It also displayed significant differences in how the students were prepared for the national assessments, in the test-taking conditions, in how achievements were judged and in how the teachers made use of the test results in the grading of the students. Moreover, the items of the assessments corresponded unequally to the taught curriculum in the respective programmes and to the interests and out-of-school experiences of students with diverse backgrounds. The thesis thus show severe problems in the realisation of the political intentions to equalise educational opportunity and to make grading equivalent between schools and programmes