ABSTRACT
When the decision was taken in 1527 by the Swedish parliament that the Lutheran rite should become the official state religion, a fundamental educational idea was also introduced. The new religion had as one of its goals that all people should be able to read and understand the Gospel. Formerly only a small elite had learnt how to read and write, and usually in Latin, which was the language of the learned. As many teachers and researchers at the universities had joined the opposition of the secondary school teachers, new units for educational research were created at the new schools of education. In 1973, when science education was evaluated in nineteen countries, it was found that Sweden had the lowest inter-school variation in achievement. From the mid-1950s to the present day, Sweden has made its whole formal education system comprehensive.
