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Found this video interesting.

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Early years education: Sweden versus the UK Part 1 (of 3)

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In the USA and UK, almost all parents buy into the idea that infants should learn to read & write as soon as possible. Indeed, many parents measure the intelligence & potential of their children by their ability to read and write at an early age.

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Independent schools

The Swedish school system includes a growing number of independent schools with public funding, friskola in Swedish. Following a law change in the 1990s, parents and their children can choose among tuition-free schools, whether municipal or private.

Although private schools have been in existence for as long as there has been compulsory education in Sweden, they were not a wide-spread competitive alternative to municipal schools until the 1992 law provided them with public funding.

These publicly funded non-municipal schools are called friskola to differentiate them from tuition-based private schools (of which there are only a handful left in Sweden).

Same rules apply in all of the Swedish school system

In Sweden, these independent schools must be approved by the Schools Inspectorate and follow the national curricula and syllabuses, just like regular municipal schools.

In 2020-2021, around 17 per cent of compulsory schools and 35 per cent of upper secondary schools were independent schools and they attracted 16 per cent of all compulsory school students and 29 per cent of all upper secondary school students.

Children's rights

The Swedish Education Act, along with the Swedish Discrimination Act, strives to protect children and students from discrimination and degrading treatment. In essence, the headteacher of nursery schools, schools and adult education programmes are responsible for enforcing prohibitions against discrimination and degrading behaviour, and for promoting equal treatment. The Equality Ombudsman supervises compliance with this law.

All students have access to a school doctor, school nurse, psychologist and school welfare officer - all tax-funded.

Also, since 2020, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is Swedish law.

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The Swedish school system includes a growing number of independent schools with public funding, friskola in Swedish. Following a law change in the 1990s, parents and their children can choose among tuition-free schools, whether municipal or private.

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1. Routine : Kate
2. enviroment - family/ school/society - Sonali
3. Curriculum : Rebecca
4. Food : P
5. Governments role in ecec effect on child : Sonali
6. Play : Kate
7. Parental involvement  Rebecca
8. Teacher i.e qualifications P
9. How does policy affect encouraging independence . organisation, social skills, emotional readiness and communication skills.

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I have never been much of a planner, which is why theSwedish adage "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing,"has always unsettled me. Though some people have a gift forstrategic thinking, I have always tended to make the biggestdecisions in my life only when the moment arrived.

This is not to say there was a lack of careful consideration, butrather that projecting far into the future always remainedabstract. I prefer to adapt and react to what is, rather thanwhat might be. But now that I am responsible for the futureof two children in a foreign country, I find that I am changingtactics.

The learning curve is steep for any new parent, yet it seemsexponentially so when you decide to raise your childrenabroad. Aside from the language pitfalls and other culturaldifferences, there are also life's fundamentals to be tended to,particularly education.

First, you have to try to figure out the educational systemand then resolve the fact that you will never have complete confidence,simply because it is different from what you know. I'vespent considerable time on this latter phase, because in manyways the Swedish approach to early-childhood education is sodifferent from the American.

Everything starts later. Due to a generous eighteen-monthparental leave, children do not -- and cannot -- begin collectivecare until after the age of 1. Most then attend a förskolan(preschool) for children ages 1-5. At age six, most go to apreparation year,and compulsoryeducation finallybegins at age seven.I was stunned bythis late start for school and, until recently, was concernedabout my children getting bored or lagging behind. Then I realizedthat this was probably because my memories of early educationwere all geared toward quantifiable achievements:learning to count, recite the alphabet, and so on. There was afocus on making "progress," on getting that gold star.

What I hear about American preschools today, includingreferences to new features such as prewriting, seems to confirmthis memory. I like the idea of children learning theirABCs and 123s early, but rather than signing up my son for aprivate international school with the American timetable, I decidedto look into why the Swedes wait longer.

What's the Hurry?

The Swedish philosophy behind a later start is to give children a longerperiod of self-generated learning. Educators here believe that this periodencourages natural curiosity without requirements and tests. Ratherthan sitting all of the children down together to learn the alphabet orcounting, teachers respond when a child expresses interest. Thisapproach allows children to develop in different areas at their own paceand lets them get a better sense of who they are before they're judged inrelation to others. It also gives children more opportunity to learn fromeach other, something not to be underestimated.

Curiously, the national preschool curriculum (Lfpö 98, thankfullyavailable in English) does not list quantifiable requirements; instead, itplaces an emphasis on socialization. There is mention of democracy andthe foundation of individual responsibility to encourage children to"actively participate in society." The phrasing is rather utopian, but Ihave actually seen it applied at my son's school. Something as simple asasking the children to choose an activity themselves or to vote on whichpark they will go to gives them both a voice and lets them learn aboutcooperation and decision making.

The curriculum also lists values to be instilled through example,which include "individual freedom and integrity, equal value of all people,gender equality, and solidarity with the weak and vulnerable." AsSwedish society becomes more diverse, tolerance of different races andreligions is increasingly important.

The fundamental practicality of Swedish preschool educationextends to the all-important matter of fees. American friends have toldme harrowing tales of day care and preschool fees in the States, so I wasastonished to learn that fees here are calculated according to householdincome, with a maximum fee of 1,260 kroner (about $200) per monthper child.

As an art historian married to a musician, I was relieved bythis discovery, particularly when I considered that the fee is nearly coveredby the monthly allowance families receive for each child. The lawsnot only state that all families with parents that work or study shouldhave access to preschool but also see to it, in concrete ways, that cost isnot a discriminating factor. And though preschool is state subsidizedand inexpensive, the quality of education remains intimate in scale; therecommended maximum ratio of students to teachers is 5 to 1.

I like the concept of my children having more time just to be kidswithout the pressure of performance-based exercises and tests,though, as someone brought up in the thoroughly American, results-basedapproach to education as practiced in Minnesota, I don't knowif I will ever be without some hesitation about the more relaxed stylehere in Stockholm. And yet, I can see that a system emphasizing theimportance of family life through many months of parental leave, sickleave to care for an ill child, and shorter, less intense days at preschoolsends a strong message to children that their needs and well-beingare significant.

When I asked Lena Magnusson, my son's favorite teacher, to namethe most important things she taught, she replied, "To be a good friendand to believe in their own abilities." This was not the answer I expected,yet I cannot think of two more important building blocks for the restof my son's life.

Bronwyn Griffith is an art historian and gallery curator.

As the World Learns > Uganda

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How Swede It Is: Are Practical (and Affordable) Swedish Preschools Better? | Edutopia

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I have never been much of a planner, which is why theSwedish adage "There is no bad weather, only bad clothing,"has always unsettled me. Though some people have a gift forstrategic thinking, I have always tended to make the biggestdecisions in my life only when the moment arrived.

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Child Perspectives and Children's Perspectives in Theory and Practice

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Recent decades have seen a growing emphasis, in a number of professional contexts, on acknowledging and acting on the views of children. This trend was given added weight by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified in 1990.

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Many home-ed parents, when asked why we home educate, will reference Finland and Sweden's models of education and their results, as part of the reasons why we choose not to... Continue Reading →

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Sweden Archives - Diary of a First Child

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Many home-ed parents, when asked why we home educate, will reference Finland and Sweden's models of education and their results, as part of the reasons why we choose not to... Continue Reading →

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It is evident that national policy and support are
not only important for individual children’s learning
and wellbeing but also for society itself. It is stated
that preschool has the highest long-term effects on the
public budget. Having a high quality ECEC for all children
requires political commitment. In Sweden there has
been a family policy for several generations in which
the state and the family share responsibility for
children’s upbringing and education from early years.
As pointed out earlier, this has not happened by itself.
Women have advocated strongly for their right to
both equality and equity, while fathers have been
encouraged to share the responsibility and take an
active part in young children’s lives from birth
(Pramling Samuelsson & Sheridan, 2009).
Sweden may be one of the countries in the world
that is spending most money on ECEC. In Sweden
the GDP allocated to ECEC is 1.4%. Compare this
with Britain, where less than 0.4% is used for the
same purpose. Most Swedish preschools have similar
conditions in terms of financial inputs, regulations
from society, and the number of children, but
nevertheless they differ in quality

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It is evident that national policy and support are
not only important for individual children’s learning
and wellbeing but also for society itself. It is stated
that preschool has the highest long-term effects on the
public budget. Having a high quality ECEC for all children
requires political commitment. In Sweden there has
been a family policy for several generations in which
the state and the family share responsibility for
children’s upbringing and education from early years.
As pointed out earlier, this has not happened by itself.
Women have advocated strongly for their right to
both equality and equity, while fathers have been
encouraged to share the responsibility and take an
active part in young children’s lives from birth
(Pramling Samuelsson & Sheridan, 2009).
Sweden may be one of the countries in the world
that is spending most money on ECEC. In Sweden
the GDP allocated to ECEC is 1.4%. Compare this
with Britain, where less than 0.4% is used for the
same purpose. Most Swedish preschools have similar
conditions in terms of financial inputs, regulations
from society, and the number of children, but
nevertheless they differ in quality

# data[].attributes.headline
 In Sweden, preschool is open to all children
aged 1-5 years. Preschool is part of the educational
system and has a national curriculum that is linked to
the curricula for other school forms within the system
of education (Swedish National Agency of Education,
2006). The preschool curriculum both embraces
fundamental values and a variety of learning gaols to
strive for. The question is, has Sweden, at a societal
level, reached its gaols concerning family reforms and
preschool quality?
From an international perspective, the Swedish
preschool quality is highly valued (OECD, 2001). Its
high quality is also confirmed by two cross-cultural
studies with regard to differences in preschool quality.
One is a cross-cultural study between Swedish and
German preschools conducted in 1997 and followed
up in 1999 (Sheridan & Schüster, 2001). The other
study is a cross-cultural study of preschool quality in
South Korea and Sweden (Sheridan, Giota, Han, &
Kwon, 2009a). The results show that there are some
differences in preschool quality that might be
interpreted as being related to each country’s national
welfare system. Observed differences were that the
staff-child ratio was higher in Sweden than in
Germany and South Korea. This gave the Swedish
teachers greater opportunities to interact and
communicate with the children, which resulted in a
higher preschool quality. The Swedish group
organisation of toddlers (1–3 years of age) and
siblings (1–5 years of age) also made it possible to
organise the children into smaller groups according to
each child’s experiences, skills and competences,
resulting in an expanded variety of learning
opportunities. There was a balance between teacherand
child-initiated activities. In the German
preschools, the schedule was often child-initiated,
while the South Korean preschools had a more rigid
teacher-planned schedule. The focus of the South
Korean preschools was mainly on the development of
children’s academic skills in areas such a

# data[].attributes.subject
 In Sweden, preschool is open to all children
aged 1-5 years. Preschool is part of the educational
system and has a national curriculum that is linked to
the curricula for other school forms within the system
of education (Swedish National Agency of Education,
2006). The preschool curriculum both embraces
fundamental values and a variety of learning gaols to
strive for. The question is, has Sweden, at a societal
level, reached its gaols concerning family reforms and
preschool quality?
From an international perspective, the Swedish
preschool quality is highly valued (OECD, 2001). Its
high quality is also confirmed by two cross-cultural
studies with regard to differences in preschool quality.
One is a cross-cultural study between Swedish and
German preschools conducted in 1997 and followed
up in 1999 (Sheridan & Schüster, 2001). The other
study is a cross-cultural study of preschool quality in
South Korea and Sweden (Sheridan, Giota, Han, &
Kwon, 2009a). The results show that there are some
differences in preschool quality that might be
interpreted as being related to each country’s national
welfare system. Observed differences were that the
staff-child ratio was higher in Sweden than in
Germany and South Korea. This gave the Swedish
teachers greater opportunities to interact and
communicate with the children, which resulted in a
higher preschool quality. The Swedish group
organisation of toddlers (1–3 years of age) and
siblings (1–5 years of age) also made it possible to
organise the children into smaller groups according to
each child’s experiences, skills and competences,
resulting in an expanded variety of learning
opportunities. There was a balance between teacherand
child-initiated activities. In the German
preschools, the schedule was often child-initiated,
while the South Korean preschools had a more rigid
teacher-planned schedule. The focus of the South
Korean preschools was mainly on the development of
children’s academic skills in areas such a

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>> Basic Data of Sweden
ECEC in Sweden (See the basic data of Sweden)

Early childhood education and care in Sweden is organized in three different pre-school activities. There are pre-school for children between 1 and 5 years, family day care and pre-school class for children aged 6. The pre-school classes (which cover at least 525 hours a year) are non-compulsory education free of charge and aim to stimulate development and learning. In pre-school classes there is a combination between the pedagogical methods in pre-school and school, which makes a platform for the children's future schooling. The pre-school is voluntary, unlike school which all children between the ages of 7 and 16 have to attend. The Swedish school-system is goal-based and has a high degree of local responsibility. Pre-school for children between 1 and 5 is not free of charge but is income-based. All education between 6 and 16 is free of charge and the pupils are not streamed or divided into different schools for more or less skilled children. In 2011 we instituted a new curriculum in Sweden, and pre-school also has its own curricula including all children between one and five years old (Ministry of Education and Research, 2010). Pre-school is also not streamed and does not divide the children into different age groups.

The Swedish pre-school mission has over the years fluctuated between focusing mainly on care or education. From the beginning the Swedish curricula were mainly inspired by Friedrich Fröbel, who advised the preschool teachers to follow the children's interests and development without steering them. This may to some extent have meant that learning activities, which are used in elementary school, are automatically considered to be unsuitable for preschool and vice versa, instead of using the best of both and adapt them to the situations appropriate. All kind of steering, even telling the child the right answer (if there is such) has been abandoned from time to time, as it has been estimated as a risk for inhibiting the children's natural curiosity and learning. The correlation between not answering the children's questions and stimulating curiosity has been questioned as such an approach. It leaves the child uncertain and might have a contradictory result in a feeling of giving up searching for answers instead of stimulating to develop new questions. In combination with the results of an evaluation of the Swedish preschool, which indicated a situation where preschool had failed to use its resources to stimulate children's learning (Promemoria U2008/6144/), learning has become discernable in the revised curriculum for pre-school, especially in the areas of the development of language and communication, mathematics, science and technology (Ministry of Education and Research, 2010). Consequently, there is a growing interest in finding new ways to facilitate children's learning in pre-school among the teachers, and in developing teachers' professional development to design for learning activities in pre-school.

Learning Study in Swedish ECEC contexts

Learning study (Marton & Tsui, 2004) has been used to develop the quality of teaching in primary and secondary education for a decade in Sweden. But the question of how to work with learning study in ECEC is a much later phenomenon, and it also differs from how learning study is used in school. Learning is an area all human beings are involved in and develops every day, no matter who or where they are. The focus in a learning study is still on intentional learning, learning that takes place in situations where someone (usually a teacher) has the intention to teach someone else (usually a child or a pupil) something (usually an ability or the content) called the object of learning. This means there is a triangular focus on; 1) the object of learning, 2) the way in which someone who intends to teach goes about providing opportunities for learning and 3) how the learner develops their ability. It is in the encounter between these three perspectives that learning occurs. A learning study is framed by a theory of learning; variation theory (Lo & Marton, 2012). By using the theory as a guiding principle, the aspects offered to discern a learning situation varies against a background of invariant aspects, as in the example below of wooden blocks.

Even if there are similarities in what to focus on and how to carry out the learning study process, there are differences between pre-school and school settings such as the activities used and in what way the learning outcomes are assessed. In ECEC environments, there is a strong focus on the child's development as a human being, and a tendency to use activities like play instead of lessons during the learning situation. What remains the same is the systematic and small grain analysis used during the learning study process to find out what it takes to learn or develop different abilities. A learning study is not a method to be used in teachers' daily work, but an in-service training used to develop teachers' ways to facilitate and assess learning and to learn to work with theoretical based activities, aiming to increase the quality of the learning. By that you can't claim learning study can't be used in all settings as all teachers working with learning activities have to develop their own professional knowledge about the conditions for learning. During the learning study process, the teacher gains knowledge about a theoretical framework on learning, which afterwards can be used in every learning situation to design and assess learning. This explicit way of seeing learning can be seen as a way to enhance the common understanding of learning which we usually do not have in the Western traditions of learning instruction. This is unlike the common way I have seen, in for example Japanese traditions, where the teachers have a shared knowledge on seeing learning as creating patterns of differences and similarities among instances of the content to be learned, although it is not always explicitly articulated.

A learning study starts with defining the object of learning, a common understanding among the teachers about what is to be learned and what issues they have found regarding learning this specific content. After that, the children's abilities are studied, to get a better picture of what they already seem to have discerned and what is not yet discerned but needs to be discerned to gain a more qualitatively deep and developed knowledge. This can be made by playing games, interviews or observing how the children handle prepared material, namely activities normally used in ECEC. The teachers design the learning activity aiming to put the aspects needed to be discerned, but not yet discerned by the children to be taught, in the foreground. If they, for example, would like to teach the children to see the difference between geometrical shapes, they might find that using wooden blocks in different colors result in a situation where the children focus on the colors, and sort by colors instead of shapes. By putting the shape in the foreground, and just use wooden blocks in one single color to challenge the children, the aspect color is removed. When the children sort the blocks, they will not be able to sort by color and by that they are more likely to discern the shape as an indicator of how to sort. The design is thereby based on natural activities used in pre-school settings but designed to further develop the children's ways of acting and gain new qualitatively developed knowledge about the world.

Before implementing the first learning activity, the specified knowledge of the children in the first group is assessed, and after the first intervention a new assessment takes place. The difference between the pre- and post-assessments is the zone of gain, and the greater the difference the more powerful has the activity been in developing the chosen objects of learning. The results of the first intervention are taken into consideration in a post-collegium conference where the design of the second intervention, to be implemented in the second group of children, is made. This cyclic process is repeated until the teachers have found what seem to be crucial for learning the targeted object. Usually three or four interventions are compared in as many groups of children. The differences in zone of gain are compared between the interventions to better understand what is crucial in the activity, and what is not, creating a shared knowledge product on learning (not a lesson design) to be used by other teachers teaching the same topic.

Research findings on Learning Study in Swedish ECEC

The research has been focusing on three different levels; the children's learning, the teachers' learning and the effectiveness of using learning study in pre-school teachers' professional development. The findings of the first study, where variation theory (Lo & Marton, 2012) was tested in the design of a learning activity aiming at three children (aged 4, 5 and 6 years) to learn the concept of "half," showed that the theoretical assumptions also worked in learning situations for small children. The design was built on no variation of cutting an object into two identical parts (halves) but variation regarding the representation (cake, apple and pear). The children where asked how many halves there would be, and then they saw how the object was cut in two halves. The children were very uncertain about how many halves there would be when the representation changed. We found that the children used the concept "half" in the same way as divided (not whole). This means there was no number of how many halves there will be of an object as it depends on how many times you chose to cut it into pieces. The definition 'two identical parts' was not discerned (Holmqvist & Tullgren, 2009).

Based on the fact that there is a curriculum in pre-school, focusing on mathematics, one of our studies focused on how the goals in the curriculum can be reached by finding ways to design learning activities by the use of learning study (Holmqvist, Tullgren & Brante, 2012). Another way to focus on this issue has been to study pre-school teachers' abilities to assess learning and predict what activities benefit the children (Holmqvist, Brante & Tullgren, 2012). The way learning study has been adapted to pre-school settings is described in a study of 24 pre-school teachers in in-service training on learning study with one implementation of a learning study per group (7) (Holmqvist Olander & Ljung-Djärf, 2012) and the way learning study has been used by pre-school teachers to understand pre-schoolers' learning has been reported based on five learning studies (Ljung-Djärf & Holmqvsit, 2013).

Conclusions

Different kinds of projects in the perspective of learning study have recently been described in a Swedish book (Holmqvist, 2013). The book aims to inform active pre-school teachers, as well as pre-service teachers, how to meet the new requirements about higher quality regarding learning in the subjects mathematics, language and science. The published studies, as well as the results from the research projects mentioned above, are promising for the future use of learning study in pre-school, but even more important in developing the quality of pre-school learning. The Swedish pre-school tradition has in some years been based on single observations aiming to assess each child's cognitive ability. After this period, a change has been seen and assessments of single children have more or less been abandoned, which has resulted in more focus on the activities, teachers and environments. There are some issues about how to find out if the quality is high or not regarding the children's development, as this has been based mainly on a general view from an evaluation which is made by the same teachers that have planned the activities. By assessing the children's development at a group level, to revise and improve the activities instead of grading or scoring the individual child, a new way is tried out. Instead of arguing about if children mainly should learn or play in pre-school it is now time to focus on purposeful play that unify these two parts of children's activities in pre-school instead of seeing them as competing.

References

Holmqvist, M. (Ed.) (2013). Learning Study i förskolan. [Learning Study in Pre-School]. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Holmqvist, M., & Tullgren, C. (2009). Pre-school children discerning numbers and letters. Forum on Public Policy.

Holmqvist, M., Tullgren, C. & Brante, G. (2012). Variation theory - a tool to achieve preschool curricula learning goals in Mathematics. Curriculum Perspectives, Vol 32, No 1, April 2012, pp 1 - 9.

Holmqvist, M., Brante, G. & Tullgren, C. (2012). Learning Study in Pre-school. Teachers' expectations for children's learning and what they actually learn. The International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, Vol 1, No 2, pp 153-167.

Holmqvist Olander, M. & Ljung-Djärf, A. (2012). Using Learning Study as In-Service Training for Preschool Teachers. In Sutterby, J. (ed.): Early Education in a Global Context. Advances in Early Education and Dau Care, Vol. 16, pp. 91-108.

Lo, M. L., & Marton, F. (2012). Towards a science of the art of teaching: Using variation theory as a guiding principle of pedagogical design. International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 1, 7-22. Doi: 10.1108/20468251211179678

Ljung-Djärf, A. & Holmqvist Olander, M. (2013). Using Learning Study to Understand Preschoolers' Learning: Challenges and Possibilities. International Journal of Early Childhood, 1(45), 77-100.

Marton, F. & Tsui, A B M. (Eds). (2004). Classroom Discourse and the Space of Learning. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Memorandum U2008/6144/S (2008). Uppdrag till Statens skolverk om förslag till förtydliganden i läroplanen för förskolan [Assignment to the National Agency of Education on proposed clarifications in pre-school curriculum]. Stockholm: Ministry of Education and Research.

The Swedish National Agency for Education (2010). Curriculum for the preschool Lpfö 98/2010, Retrieved July, 2013.

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[Sweden] Theoretical Based Learning activities in Early Childhood Education and Care - Projects

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Basic Data of Sweden ECEC in Sweden (See the basic data of Sweden) Early childhood education and care in Sweden is organized in three different pre-school activities. There are pre-school for children between 1 and 5 years, family day care and pre-school class for children aged 6.

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Teachers TV: How Do They Do It In Sweden?

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The Early Years series uncovers the successful Swedish approach to education in Motala. Sweden's attitude to teaching one to six year olds appears incredibly relaxed. There's little formal learning and play is paramount. Most of the children ...

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A Swedish preschool of 250 students and 60 teachers and support staff takes an approach to early childhood development that is quite unique from British and American practice. Although heavily subsidized, the school operates free of government inspections and accountability. The slim curriculum focuses on core values, having fun, and developing social and physical skills.

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Swedish preschool is a place to grow. There is a focus on basic values such as playing together, tolerance and consideration for others. Outdoor activities are key. And Swedish childcare is affordable for everyone.

Start reading

Swedish preschool is a place to grow. There is a focus on basic values such as playing together, tolerance and consideration for others. Outdoor activities are key. And Swedish childcare is affordable for everyone.

Playing outdoors

In Swedish preschools, children play outside at every opportunity. Even in the depths of winter they are bundled into one-piece overalls, hats and gloves and taken outside. To the surprise of many foreign-born parents, smaller children will often have their midday nap outside on all but the coldest days. So-called outdoor preschools, where the children are outside almost exclusively, regardless of the weather, are also popular.

Gender pedagogy

Gender pedagogy is increasingly common in Swedish preschools. The aim is for children to have the same opportunities in life, regardless of whether they are male or female. How? By working against gender stereotypes and assigned roles, freeing children from the expectations and demands society has traditionally put on girls and boys.

While only about five per cent of carers working daycare in Sweden are men, this is still a higher proportion than in many other countries.

High proportion

Today, some 80 per cent of one- to five-year-olds attend preschool in Sweden, if only for a few hours a day. This is high by international standards, and one explanation lies in Sweden's large share of dual-earner families.

Another contributing factor is Sweden's maximum-fee policy, which makes childcare affordable for everyone. Fees are calculated according to income with low-income families paying nothing while the costs for more affluent parents are capped at SEK 1,382 (about €139) per month.

The policy states that parents should only have to spend one to three per cent of the family's income on childcare, depending on how many children they have. This means childcare costs in Sweden are a fraction of those in other nations.

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Swedish preschool is a place to grow. There is a focus on basic values such as playing together, tolerance and consideration for others. Outdoor activities are key. And Swedish childcare is affordable for everyone. Start reading Swedish preschool is a place to grow.