Most immigrants with poor school education have no intention to learn Swedish, according to a teacher working in Sweden.

51-year-old Swedish teacher Richard Holmgren has been teaching Swedish to migrants in Linkoping for about ten years. In the past two and a half years, he has taught the so-called 1C course, where the number refers to the students’ existing skill levels. In this case, it denotes low skills, while the letter C indicates a level corresponding to the 4th or 5th grade of Swedish primary schools.

Mr Holmgren has recently written an opinion piece published in the local paper Corren about his experiences in the profession, which received a lot of attention. He wrote that during the time he has taught the 1C level, only 8 out of 100 students have passed the exam.

He says most poorly skilled migrants find it challenging to spell certain words, or to write sentences in Swedish, despite having spent 14 months on learning the language at a basic level.

Richard Holmgrenn stressed that the figures he presented were his firsthand experience gained as a teacher of immigrants, many of whom received no education at all before arriving in Sweden.

„I take these numbers from my classes that I’ve been delivering for two and a half years. We evaluate four areas: reading, writing, speaking and listening comprehension,” Mr Holmgrenn added.

The students stay in the system for years without learning the language, the teacher said. Those in power bury their heads in the sand, he remarked, adding that it is a systemic mistake to believe that all poorly skilled people arriving in Sweden will be able to participate in education and get a job.

„You need secondary or tertiary education to be employable. So you have to work your way through the system until you reach that level. There are many who will never make it. Everyone should go through this system. They say that everyone can do it, but this isn’t true. This is what I want to show,”

the teacher said.