The original article requires translation.
This autumn marks the premiere of the national exams in digital form. But far from all schools are ready for the transition, which takes off in earnest in the spring semester of 2025.
- We have seen that many principals and schools do not yet have the technical conditions in place. Therefore, we will offer substitute tests in paper format during a transition period, says Marcello Marrone, project manager for the Swedish National Agency for Education's work with the government's mandate to make the tests digital.
The technical solutions are missing for many
Last fall, the Swedish National Agency for Education sent out a survey to principals at schools with grade 6 to get a picture of how they were doing in their preparations for the digital assessment support that will be implemented this spring. About half of those who responded stated that they intended to implement the voluntary support, but many lacked technical solutions to make the transition.
There were also many who did not take the Swedish National Agency for Education's technical verification tests, where you can, among other things, try to log into the test platform and test your ability to transfer data digitally.
- To enter the exam platform, school staff must have e-identification with multi-factor identification. There are quite a few who haven't made it there, but if you add the mane, you can catch up, says Marcello Marrone.
Even when it comes to logging in, there is a solution during a transitional period in the form of Eduid, a service with support for e-identification that the Swedish Research Council/Sunet is responsible for.
Do all students have the digital skills they need to complete the national exams?
- It is the principal's responsibility to ensure that students and school staff have the digital skills they need. This means, among other things, that the students must be used to working with the digital device that is used at the time of the test.
Since January this year, schools have been able to carry out demo tests to familiarize themselves with the Swedish National Agency for Education's test platform. They can also use the exam platform to take practice exams, which are more subject-oriented than the demo exams.
The Prim group at Stockholm University is responsible for the design of the digital national exams in mathematics in grades 6, 9 and course 1 at upper secondary school.
- During our preparations, we have seen that there are certain tasks where it is better for the students to report their calculations on paper. That's why we choose to have a test section where they get the information digitally but do their solutions on paper, says Samuel Sollerman, director
at Prim.
The same conditions with built-in aids
The first digital exam in mathematics will be published in the fall of 2025. Despite the challenges, Samuel Sollerman sees several advantages of digitization. One is that the digital format makes it possible to test parts of the course and subject plan that were previously difficult to test. Digitization also facilitates various forms of interactivity.
- An example of an interactive investigative task is that you can connect mathematical questions to different geometric figures that the student can draw and stretch.
Automatic assessment and correction means a time saving for the teachers, among other things as the work can be divided so that several teachers each take a limited part.
In the past, students have been able to use their own calculators and other digital tools during the exam. In the digital system, the aids are built-in.
- This means that everyone gets the same conditions, says Samuel Sollerman.
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