Back to books - Sweden's schools cutting back on digital learning

Sweden's government is championing a renewed focus on physical books, paper and pens in classrooms, designed to reverse falling literacy levels.

But doubling down on analogue tools has drawn criticism from tech companies, educators and computer scientists, who argue it could impact pupils' employment prospects, and even damage the Nordic nation's economy.

At a high school in Nacka just outside Stockholm, final-year students are unpacking laptops from rucksacks and tote bags, alongside items they say they used less frequently a few years ago.

"I now go home from school with new books and papers often," says Sophie, 18. She says one teacher "has started printing all the texts that we use during the lesson", while a digital learning platform in maths lessons has been swapped out for textbook-only teaching.

It's an image that clashes with Sweden's reputation as one of Europe's most tech savvy societies, thanks to high levels of digital skills, and a thriving tech start-up scene.

Back to books: Sweden's digital backlash

Laptops became mainstream in Swedish classrooms in the late 2000s and early 2010s. By 2015, around 80% of pupils at municipal state-funded high schools had individual access to a digital device, according to official data.

The compulsory use of tablets in pre-schools was included in the curriculum in 2019, as part of the previous Social Democrat-led government's mission to prepare even the youngest children for an increasingly digital work and private life.

But the current right-wing coalition, which came to power in 2022, is moving teaching in a different direction.

"We're trying, actually, to get rid of screens as much as possible," says Joar Forsell, an education spokesperson for the Liberal party whose leader is Sweden's education minister.

"With higher ages in school you might use them a little bit more, but with lower ages, or in school, I don't think we should use screens at all."

The government has frequently used the slogan "från skärm till pärm", which sounds catchy in Swedish, and translates to "from screen to binder".

It argues that screen-free lessons create better conditions for children to concentrate and develop their writing and reading skills.

Since 2025, pre-schools are no longer required to use digital tools, and tablets aren't given to children under the age of two.

Later this year a ban on mobiles in schools – even for educational use – comes into force.

Schools have already been allocated more than 2.1 billion krona ($200m; £157m) in grants to invest in textbooks and teacher guides. A new curriculum designed to enforce textbook-based learning is due in 2028.

"Reading real books and writing on real paper, and counting with real numbers on real paper, is much better if you want kids to get the knowledge they need," argues Forsell.

The shift in approach followed a consultation in 2023 involving academic researchers, teaching organisations, public agencies and municipalities.

"There's been an increased awareness of the disruption that technology is causing in classrooms," says Dr Sissela Nutley, a neuroscientist affiliated with the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who is amongst those who have raised concerns about the use of digital tools.

The government hopes the shift back to more traditional teaching methods will help improve Sweden's standing in the Pisa rankings - the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD's) benchmark for core educational subjects. Once a star performer, Sweden's scores plummeted in 2012, and after a brief recovery, saw another significant dip in maths and reading in 2022.