The bill to educate an elementary school student in a municipal school landed at SEK 113,700 last year, shows recent statistics from Statistics Sweden compiled by the municipal and county council database Kolada.

The sum includes just about everything, from administration to planer benches and sewing machines.

Expensive in rural areas

For a variety of reasons, the different expenditure items vary widely between municipalities. For example, it is extra expensive to run school activities in sparsely populated areas. But also things like staffing density, wage-driven competition for teachers, larger investments and political ambition levels - or savings requirements - in the municipality come into play.

The tuition, mainly measured in salaries to teachers, cost SEK 48,000 per pupil in Värmdö in Stockholm County. In Sorsele in Västerbotten, the cost was SEK 97,000. And while the school premises cost SEK 6,500 per pupil in Småland Emmaboda, Orust deposited SEK 33,500 per pupil on the west coast.

Big differences

Boxholm in Östergötland allocated SEK 1,100 per pupil in what is called teaching tools, ie books, school libraries, computers and other equipment. In Kungsör in Västmanland County SEK 11,500 was allocated per pupil.

Thus, at the national level, the total cost of SEK 113,700 landed last year, an increase of 3.9 percent compared with 2017. The lowest was Hallsberg, Örebro county, with SEK 93,000 per pupil. A student in Överkalix, Norrbotten, cost almost twice as much: SEK 184,000.

Kolada's compilation covers only the municipal schools, due to financial statistical confidentiality of the independent schools.