Academic grading in Sweden

This article is about the grades that are used in Sweden.

In the Swedish grundskola [Kindergarten - Ninth grade] (primary/elementary and secondary/high school, officially called "compulsory school" by Skolverket), students are currently (December 2012) graded from the sixth grade and onward. Students can be graded:

If a student hasn't been attending classes enough (e.g. due to sickness, late start, truancy), they will instead be marked with an *-, that gives the same points (0p) as an *F, despite not being an actual grade.

A reform was taken into full effect on the beginning of the semester in 2011 which had students graded from the sixth grade, and the grade is more similar to the system of the upper secondary school (gymnasium), with grades F-A. According to Skolverket, the change is due to a lot of students (~10 %) failing in courses in Swedish, Swedish as a second language, English or mathematics in the 9th year.

In the gymnasium (three-year pre-university course, similar to the UK sixth form college, officially called "upper secondary school" by Skolverket, despite there being no such thing as a "lower secondary school"), the same grading system as the primary school was used until 2011, when it was changed to a six-degree system A-F (A being the highest and F for having failed). Grades are assigned based on individual achievements rather than relative performance. Formally, the grade should reflect the degree of attainment of stated learning outcomes and objectives.

To easily count an average grade for the student, every grade in its subject gives a certain amount of points. To later use the grades for entrance to a specific program of courses in the Gymnasium, or to the higher educational institutes as the Universities etcetera. To count the average, all the points of the seventeen best grades are count together to then be divided by 17, the number of grades a student can present. Thau the best possible grade, *A, is worth 20 points, the maximum score is 340 points (17 grades x 20 points [The grade of an *A] per grade), or an average score of 20 points, which only is made if the student can show the grade of an *A in all subjects he/she has read during the last semester.

This can be shown by the grade forms below;

[Bild] Picture & Art= B (17.5)

[Engelska] English= A (20)

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