In the last 15-20 years, Sweden has suffered a downturn in several important aspects of the elementary and secondary education system. To begin to illustrate the state of Sweden's schools, we can make a comparison with the heavily criticized American education system. It is a common and understandable belief, in the U.S. and elsewhere, that Swedish schools compare favorably with American schools in terms of educational outcomes. But the weakest American students in 8
th grade
performed significantly better than the weakest Swedish 8
th graders in the TIMSS Mathematics assessment in 2011, one of the international comparative tests that have existed since the 1990s. In the latest cycle of the TIMSS Mathematics assessment, conducted in 2015, the weakest U.S. and Swedish students performed identically, but American students outperformed Swedish students in all other percentiles.
In contrast, Swedish students outperformed their U.S. peers across the entire distribution in 1995. A similar negative development can be observed in Swedish students' performance in the PISA. Swedish 9
th graders performed above the international average in the first cycle of PISA in 2000, but then Sweden's results steadily deteriorated in each of the three PISA core areas-reading, mathematics, and science - until
a low point was reached in 2012.
Another PISA assessment conducted in 2012 revealed shortcomings in creativity, critical thinking, curiosity, and perseverance, and ranked Sweden 20th out of 28 countries. The findings in the TIMSS and PISA assessments suggest that there has been a significant decline in knowledge among Swedish students in recent years.
Comment: The issue of corruption in medicine is huge, and the consequences for patients is largely incalculable. Until some steps are taken, like the ones suggested above, the cycle of corruption will continue and patients will continue to suffer, while public confidence in the medical system continues to erode.
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