It was last year that Stefan Sellbjer conducted his study with 33 professors in several different subjects, all active in southern Sweden.

In a blind test, among other things, a biology professor and a geography professor took part in the knowledge requirements from the curricula for year 6, 9, high school, bachelor's and master's level at the university and the postgraduate education in their respective subjects.

They would themselves interpret the degree of difficulty in the formulations and then place the criteria on the correct grade or academic level. The result was clear:

- It was a bit absurd indeed. It turned out that most ranked knowledge requirements from postgraduate education were as difficult as those from primary school, says Stefan Sellbjer.

Complicated and free of interpretations

The background to the unexpected result, he believes, is that the grading criteria today are long, complicated and open to interpretations:

- In the knowledge requirements there were a lot of words that can be interpreted as written in pluralis. The student should be able to give a reasoning or 1024 reasoning on a topic, depending on how the word reasoning is interpreted.

"Just a small step"

Therefore, he now welcomes the government's announcement that it will review and shorten several of the wording in the knowledge requirements.

- It was great, but it's just a small step on the road. The basic problem lies in the idea that it is the state that formulates the criteria and that the teachers should implement. This ideal picture cannot be implemented in reality, for teachers will always interpret different requirements. What is also needed is to strengthen the teachers' and the students' independence and the teachers' own competence in grading.

How does it feel then that your little independent study affected the government on this issue?

- Yes, but it feels great, it's really nice to make some kind of effort for something that I think was wrong.

Stefan Sellbjer's study has also led to a research group at the Linnaeus University in Kalmar and Växjö receiving research grants from the Swedish Research Council to just look at the exact progression, what different levels of knowledge differ for, and how to formulate increasing degrees of difficulty in words.