The Future of Education

In higher education, different disciplines have different prerequisites. The field of STEM education often request certain earlier studies with specified grades in subjects such as mathematics and physics [1]. In humanities many research studies report on student failures due to insufficient second language skills in English [2]. Less studies have reported on the importance of decent first language skills to cope with the reading and writing in intense courses that are frequent in social science and humanities. This study h2as the aim of investigating the potential relationship between students’ secondary school grades in their first language, and their learning outcomes in programmes, given in the same language, at a department of education. The research question that guided this study was: what is the relationship between students’ grade in Swedish at secondary level and their level of completion to five-year courses? Data include N=3776 unique students taking full courses during 2016–2024 and was obtained and examined by SQLs from related national databases Swedish Council for Higher Education, and Ladok. Cross-mapping of data and basic statistical analysis, including linear multiple regression, was performed in SPSS. Results indicate that above average grade levels resulted in higher chance of course completion, although the strength to this relationship were course dependent. A trend with lower grades in all admitted students in recent years compared to earlier was also observed. These results may concern educational stakeholders and policymakers that work with course design and related implementations. Implications from this study are further discussed, such as potential consequences of restricting courses to certain grade level prerequisites, and considerations to necessary developmental factors of the students.