The corona crisis has not affected the final grades negatively - on the contrary.

More in year 9 could apply to upper secondary school compared to last year.

At the same time, there is an awareness that the canceled national tests have made it more difficult for teachers to grade students.

- We know that there are some problems with the grading and that it is not completely equivalent.

But there is no reason to believe that teachers' ability to grade would have deteriorated in the spring, says Peter Fredriksson.

Of the 114,000 students who graduated from primary school this spring, 85.6 per cent of them were eligible for upper secondary school.

The largest positive development is seen among boys, with an increase of 1.5 percentage points.

But even though the differences are diminishing, girls are generally still doing better.

- That girls generally perform slightly better than boys has been constant for a long time and the pattern looks the same in other countries, says Fredriksson.

The parents' level of education is of great importance.

Eligibility is 93 percent among students whose parents have a college education, compared with 77 percent among students with parents who have only graduated from high school.

- The differences in Sweden based on the students' socio-economic background are still unreasonably large.

Breaking this pattern and improving the results for the less resourceful students is therefore the Swedish school's biggest challenge, says Peter Fredriksson.