The Christmas holiday from mid-December to early January divides the Swedish school year into two terms.

Children between ages 5/6 and 15/16 attend comprehensive school where a wide range of subjects are studied.

[12] During the nineteenth century, as demand for education increased, more women entered the teaching force in many Western countries, including Sweden.

These primary school provided a basic education, focusing on reading, writing, math and religious knowledge.

The folkskola remained the basis for the Swedish educational system until the introduction of the 9-year comprehensive school in 1962.

[14] The 1962 curriculum included two different study paths, vocational and preparatory; this was however abolished in the 1969 revision.

Prices range from free to a maximum of 1 425 SEK (€135 or US$150) per month as of July 2019[update] with exact rates set by the municipality.

[19][18] This is achieved through pedagogical activities prepared by preschool teachers often involving things such as play, singing and drawing.

[20] The educational system in Sweden is based on a nine-year long comprehensive school (grundskola), with mandatory attendance between six–seven and fifteen–sixteen years of age.

[21] In the Swedish compulsory school each student takes 16 compulsory subjects which are, sorted by time allocated: Swedish, mathematics, physical education, English, handicrafts, music, visual arts, technology, physics, chemistry, biology, history, social studies, religion, geography and home economics.

Many schools also offer additional help in the core subjects English and Swedish instead of the language course.

[25] Taking the language course can improve the students' final grade significantly and can be required for some more competitive upper secondary schools.

[32] Students have regular development talks with their teachers discussing how to improve based on their IUP and grades.

Pupils can have either 16 or 17 grades depending on if they take an additional language course on top of the 16 compulsory subjects.

[44] In 2014, the National Agency for Education published guidelines to staff on how to act during incidents of armed violence.

[36][51] Homeschooling is only permitted for students who for some reason, usually severe sickness, cannot participate in normal classroom education.

[36][54][67] After upper secondary school, students can apply to university in order to receive tertiary education.

Swedish degrees are incorporated in the Bologna Process, the European higher education framework.

[71] Before being accepted to a higher education programme in Sweden, all applicants must demonstrate a minimum proficiency in Swedish and English.

To gain admittance to courses or programmes using the SweSAT, students need to independently fulfill the eligibility requirements.

[76] As of autumn semester 2011, higher education is free of charge only for Swedish, EU/EEA, and Swiss citizens.

Regional economic differences directly affect how much money each municipality can provide per pupil.

[85][86] In 2023, Minister for Schools Lotta Edholm launched an investigation into friskolor, after calling into question its profit-making model.

[92] The Swedish model has been put forward as a possible model for similar solutions in both the United Kingdom[86][93] and the United States, where Per Unckel, County Governor of Stockholm and former Conservative Minister of Education, in 2009 summarized the advantages of the Swedish system in an opinion piece produced by the Libertarian think tank Pacific Research Institute: "Education is so important that you can’t just leave it to one producer.

[94] In February 2013, The Guardian published an article by a former political advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Education, Karin Svanborg-Sjövall, on the independent school system: "Sweden proves that private profit improves services and influences policy.

[97] Sweden came in first in the United Nations Children's Fund 2008 ranking of early childhood education.

[98] Swedish results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) were in 2015 close to the OECD average.

In the spring of 2021, the nationwide newspaper Expressen published a series of articles describing major flaws in the testing carried out by the National Agency for Education.

An investigation into how this could have happened despite several officials at the Ministry for Education having raised questions concerning the testing methods is taking place.

Some MPs have called for the resignation of the Minister for Education,[109] who in turn has directed the liability for testing towards the school authority.