Maths and Danish causing problems at school

Students have to have at least 02 in eight compulsory tests to pass the 9th grade in primary school. Nevertheless, on average in each primary school class, there were two pupils who did not pass Danish and mathematics in the final exam this summer, according to new figures from the Ministry of Children and Education. “Today, it has a significantly greater significance, if you fail primary school because there are admission requirements for upper secondary education… This potentially means something in the long run, and in the long term you can drop out of the labour market completely,” says Andreas Rasch-Christensen, Head of Research at VIA*, who specialises in the school area.
     If the pupils who are exempt from Danish and mathematics by the school management are excluded, the group grows larger. This means that one in eight primary school students did not pass the subjects at the end of the 9th grade this summer – some 8,000 students.
     Head of Analysis Emilie Agner Damm from the Labour Movement’s Business Council, which is an economic policy think tank and analysis institute, says that it is absolutely essential that something is done about primary schools, so that students can do arithmetic and write when they finish primary school. “If we want fewer young people in the future to be without an upper secondary education, we need to do something about primary and lower secondary schools. We need a stronger primary school that simply manages to lift the academically weakest young people,” she says.
      The government’s budget proposal for 2024 focuses on the ten percent of weakest students. The government will allocate DKK 35 million to start a course where students are taught in small teams. The pool will increase to DKK 500 million in 2028. (Ed: *VIA is one of Denmark’s six university colleges. The three letters are not an acronym, but the Latin word for a highway et al.) /ritzau/