The number of people who are illiterate in Sweden is expected to exceed 800,000 in winter of this year, with researchers expecting the number to soon reach 1 million, in large part due to mass immigration.
The most recent survey by Statistics Sweden shows there are currently around 780,000 people between the ages of 16 and 65 who are illiterate in Sweden, but this number is soaring.
“Each month, eight to ten illiterate students arrive,” said Rita Sommarkrans, SFI teacher in Västerås, to SVT. She added that if someone can’t read or write, it’s hard for them to find a place, pay their bills, or even book a doctor’s appointment.
“If this trend continues, we risk having an entire generation of young people who are effectively functionally illiterate,” wrote Minister of Education Johan Pehrson and Minister of School Affairs Lotta Edholm in an introductory article.
However, Swedish publication Fria Tider notes that the ministers are failing to explain what the main cause behind the massive illiteracy problem is in the country, which is mass immigration of illiterate adults from the Third World, which the allegedly conservative ruling government is failing to stop.
However, many of these foreigners are bringing children or giving birth to children who are entering the Swedish school system. In some cities, Swedish children are already the minority in the school system, such as Mälmo. In fact, the situation has gotten so extreme in that city that city officials are proposing to teach in Arabic instead of Swedish, as Remix News reported in the past. However, such a move will only accelerate the problem of illiteracy and result in even deeper divisions in society.
Due to the falling literacy rates, Sweden is transforming its entire school system, making compulsory schooling 10 years instead of nine. In 2024, the number of students who were able to successfully complete the compulsory nine-year primary school continued to decrease.
Out of the slightly more than 120,000 Swedish students in primary school, 20,000 finished compulsory school in 2024 without graduating to upper secondary school. This segment of students will have little chance of getting a job or career, and as Swedish news portal Samnytt writes, many of them will turn to crime or welfare to get by.
“It is worrying that the results of 9th graders are decreasing. More students should complete primary school, not fewer. Failure to complete primary school is one of the main risk factors for unemployment and social exclusion,” said Anna Castberg, a department head at the Swedish Education Agency, in an official press release.
The Swedish National Education Office notes that the education level of the parents greatly influences the grades of the children. The lowest level of education is found among non-Western migrants, and consequently students of this group dominate among the worst performers. In addition, the education gap between Swedes and migrants is increasing instead of decreasing.
Most new citizens come from non-EU Muslim countries
In fact, a new report from the Swedish Migration Agency now shows that Sweden has granted 660,362 migrants Swedish citizenship since 2015, with the vast majority coming from non-EU Muslim countries.
One of the top recipients of Swedish citizenship is Somalia, which is a country with one of the lowest levels of education in the world and an official illiteracy rate of 62.2 percent. In many cases, the people arriving from this country do not even know how to read and write in their own language, let alone Swedish. Data shows that 53,543 Somalians received citizenship since 2015, the second most of any country.
In first place was Syria, with 147,579 Syrians receiving citizenship since 2015, or 22 percent of the total.
Sweden’s performance in the PISA test has also drastically fallen, which will have dramatic results for Sweden’s economy over the coming years, as the country relies on a highly trained and high-tech workforce delivering high-value goods to the world market. In fact, the government was embroiled in a scandal in 2020 when its high PISA scores turned out to be a fraud.
At the time, Sweden’s Expressen wrote, “The latest PISA results showed an increase for Swedish students. Expressen can now reveal how a large number of foreign-born students were wrongly removed from the PISA selection, and that Sweden thereby violated the OECD’s official regulations. The figures also suggest that Swedish-born students with weak language skills were also removed.”
The paper further wrote that “If the rules had been followed, the Swedish results would have been significantly worse and Sweden would probably have gone backwards in all three subjects compared to the last exam.”
Swedish schools are now dangerous for teachers and students
Swedish schools are also becoming more dangerous. The Swedish Teachers’ Union (Sveriges Lärare) issued a warning about the increased threats and violence facing teachers in Stockholm.
The number of serious incidents increased 36 percent to 159 cases in 2023 compared to 2022.
“There are threats ranging from ‘I’ll kill you’ and ‘I’ll shoot you’ to direct acts of violence,” said Simon Sandström, the union’s security officer, in an interview with Swedish Radio.
