Report shows no problems on Swedish Christian schools, government still wants establishment ban

Since last autumn, 15 Christian schools have been specially inspected by the Swedish School Inspectorate. The Christian Swedish daily Dagen reports that none of these schools has received any remarks on how they managed the confessional elements. In its thematic supervision of denominational free schools, the authorities wanted to ensure that the teaching rests on a scientific basis and that education and teaching are conducted on the school's value base.

Although there were some remarks, for example, because they applied dress codes or well-being rules that were not judged to be in line with the school's core values, none of the investigated schools' teaching is affected by the confessional elements that may appear within the education in general, for example in the form of morning prayer.

Ban

As CNE reported earlier, the Swedish government presented a bill last week in which it proposed to stop the establishment of denominational independent schools. In that presentation, they referred to previous problems with denominational elements in teaching as described in the School Inspectorate's annual report for 2021, released on March 15th this year. However, the Inspectorate did not found any wrongdoings in the more recent investigation that was executed on this particular point.

The ruling Social Democrats want to ban existing denominational schools as well. However, since there is currently not enough support in parliament for this ban, the government is currently settling for a ban on establishing new schools.