The government has given Statistics Sweden two separate tasks, or uppdrag. The first is to put together a preliminary study into how listening and speaking skills among immigrants could be measured, while the second will also examine the reading skills of people in Sweden who were born elsewhere.
The tasks are part of a plan announced in December 2024, where the government tasked Statistics Sweden with proposing an ‘Integration Barometer’ in the form of a regular study aimed at measuring the differences between immigrants and people born in Sweden on a number of "factors which are otherwise difficult to measure with register data”.
“Having good knowledge of the Swedish language is a basic foundation for being able to get established on the labour market,” labour and integration minister Mats Persson said in a statement.
“Now, the government is taking another step forward when it comes to basing integration policy on fact. These tasks we’ve given Statistics Sweden will give us better skills when it comes to monitoring integration,” he said.
According to government documents, Statistics Sweden has been tasked to collaborate with the Swedish National Agency for Education and “other relevant authorities, researchers and organisations” on the preliminary study into mapping listening and speaking skills.
“Within the parameters of the assigned tasks, Statistics Sweden shall study and analyse methods which are used for testing listening and speaking skills in similar or related situations,” government documents read. “Statistics Sweden shall propose a method of monitoring knowledge of Swedish to a level necessary for successful participation in Swedish societal and professional life.”
By December 1st, 2025, Statistics Sweden must submit a final report to the labour market department along with a timeline for the proposal’s implementation.
"Language skills are essential for successfully joining the labour market and society at large," Sweden Democrat migration spokesperson Ludvig Aspling said. "Unfortunately, we currently know too little about the language skills of foreign-born people. This task we have given Statistics Sweden will allow us to gain a better picture of this."
Regarding reading skills, the agency is tasked with not only proposing how these skills could be mapped, but also carrying out regular monitoring of immigrants’ reading skills from 2025 to 2028, with a final report to be submitted by 16th November, 2029 at the latest.
Both proposals have been assigned a maximum budget of 2 million kronor in 2025, with the latter multi-year test of reading skills expected to cost the state a total of 48 million kronor between 2026 and 2029.
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