Today’s big topic: 100 schools will get 200 million kroner to raise standards. But chance could determine which schools they are
We still do not know which 100 schools will get a share of the special pot of money the government plans to set aside in the national budget.
What’s happening?
As one of the government’s flagship initiatives in education, it will soon designate 100 schools where students perform particularly poorly in Danish and math.
Starting next school year, they will be included in a project allocated 200 million kroner in the national budget, intended to raise academic standards.
But it is far from clear-cut which schools ought to make the list. That is the conclusion of an analysis by the think tank DEA, which casts doubt on the logic of singling out exactly 100 schools.
Why it matters!
DEA examined which schools would be included in the government’s project if the criterion were that schools must have the highest share of students who fail both Danish and math in ninth grade.
In that case, it cannot be ruled out that 40 percent of the country’s remaining schools could just as well have made the list instead of school No. 100. Many other schools are not significantly different from it.
Drawing a hard line at 100 could therefore result in the government treating two schools that perform virtually the same differently.
The government has not yet said how it will select the 100 schools, but that, too, could prove decisive.
In DEA’s analysis, the think tank lays out six different possibilities for what the selection criterion could be. It could be average grades in Danish and math or how many students go on to upper secondary education. The government itself cites that measure as a motivation for the effort in its policy platform. Depending on the criterion, there is substantial turnover on the list.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
In other news
– The government wants to spend nearly 70 million kroner on new marine nature parks
Two new areas in Danish waters are to be turned into so-called marine national nature parks, where nature and the marine environment will be restored and the area, to some extent, protected from fishing and the extraction of raw materials. That is what the government and its parliamentary support partner, the Alternative, are proposing in the draft national budget for 2027.
Specifically, the proposal sets aside 67.8 million kroner over three years. Those funds would make it possible to establish two areas where active nature restoration would take place and where a ban on industrial fishing could potentially be introduced.
– 31-year-old man sentenced to one year in prison in case involving violence at World Cup event
A 31-year-old man has been sentenced in the Copenhagen City Court to one year in prison for assaulting a 32-year-old Swedish man, who later died. The assault took place at a big-screen event on Islands Brygge in Copenhagen in June, where a World Cup match between Norway and Côte d’Ivoire was being shown. He has also been given a nightlife ban for one year. The 31-year-old has pleaded guilty to the charges.
– Danish wolves to be registered by DNA
A better overview of Denmark’s wolves is to be established, and from the turn of the year all wolves will be identifiable by their DNA. That is what the Danish Agency for Green Land Conversion and Water Environment wrote in a press release on Wednesday. At the same time, the agency said it has put out to tender the task of monitoring the wolves and setting up a so-called individual register. A tender is a process in which a public authority asks interested companies to bid for a task, a product or a service.
Talk of town: Plenty in that profile is probably true – but even so, the criticism of Jyllands-Posten was justified.
Søren Gade, who stepped down Tuesday as Speaker of the Folketing, is the central figure in this week’s most talked-about profile.
Tuesday – on the day the Folketing opened – Jyllands-Posten published a journalistic profile of the now former Speaker of the Folketing and former minister Søren Gade (Venstre, V). A few hours later, the traditional painted portrait of the departing Speaker was unveiled at Christiansborg.
So far, however, the journalistic portrait has drawn far more attention than the painted one.
Since its publication, several ministers and members of Parliament have taken to social media to voice support for Gade, while Jyllands-Posten has been met with fierce criticism. And for good reason.
In the piece, Jyllands-Posten let 13 anonymous sources drag Søren Gade through the mud, to the point that it read like pure character assassination. Gade was described as a man who yells at staff, doesn’t like sandwiches, which he apparently also explains by yelling. He was portrayed as greedy, sladerous, and more or less friendless. Readers were left with an image of Søren Gade as a failed political and personal figure, someone who once had a bright future and has now thrown it in the trash. No mitigating circumstances. No room for other perspectives.
Plenty of what was in that profile is probably true. But whatever the case, the short conclusion has to be that it should not have been published in the form it was. There are two main journalistic problems: the use of anonymous sources and the balance.
Read the full commentary from Amalie Kestler here.
This newsletter features stories originally published in Danish. AI was used to shorten and translate the articles into English, after which a member of the editorial staff reviewed and refined the content.