The education minister, Tina Nedergaard, today presented the government’s proposal for a school reform that places a heavy emphasis on improving reading skills.
Titled “Competency and Freedom”, the proposal contains 19 initiatives aimed at bringing student performance in line with spending.
“The results don’t measure up to our expectations, considering how expensive our state school system is,” said Nedergaard at the presentation.
Today’s initiative comes after the PISA international reading test released yesterday showed Denmark fell three places to 18th out of the 33 participating countries.
According to the plan, all school children should be able to read after the second grade. Nursery class leaders will receive further training, enabling them to teach Danish at the nursery level. Second graders will be tested in reading, and the results will be made available to the public.
Other proposals include more classes in Danish, maths, English and natural science in order to improve pupils’ general knowledge levels.
