Students may use their mother tongue in the lessons

Among the 150 students at Sternöskolan, 15 different languages ​​are represented, which the teachers want to use in teaching.

During the lessons, students with the same mother tongue can take help from each other or a study supervisor.

- Then they can talk about a task in their mother tongue first and then in Swedish, says teacher Sofie Hasselberg.

The goal is for all pupils to learn as good a Swedish as possible. But when the teaching is adapted to the students' Swedish, the knowledge goals are not reached.

- By using their mother tongue, they can gain deeper knowledge, says Sofie Hasselberg.

- We want to assess their knowledge in a subject, not how good their Swedish is, continues her colleague Jennie Söderlind.

Is there a risk that pupils' Swedish will develop more slowly?

- On the contrary, we believe that it is faster because the content of the teaching becomes more interesting. Students become more motivated to adopt the language, says Sofie Hasselberg.

Students with Swedish as their mother tongue work in the same way on the English lessons.

- They are allowed to write their texts in Swedish before translating them into English. Then the language becomes more advanced than if they were written in English directly, says Jennie Söderlind.