The preschool curriculum, Lpfö 18, is the governing document every Swedish förskola (municipal preschool, from age one) must follow. It has two parts: a set of core values based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and goals in areas such as language, mathematics, nature, creativity and play. It says what the förskola should work towards, not what your child should be able to do at a given age.
The curriculum gets mentioned at parents' evenings and in the weekly newsletters, but few parents have read it. Nor do they need to: it is written for the staff. Here is what it contains and what it means for a three-year-old, in plain language.
A weekly newsletter from a förskola in Solna, one Friday in October: "We have been working with patterns in nature and exploring autumn with all our senses." It sounds like school-speak. What it means is that the children collected leaves in the yard, sorted them into red and yellow, and laid them in rows on a bench. That is the curriculum's mathematics and science, and it is a morning a three-year-old remembers as the day she was allowed to keep leaves in her pockets.
Two parts: core values and goals
The first part is about the values the förskola should stand for: the equal worth of all people, gender equality, democracy, solidarity. The second part sets out goals and guidelines for the förskola's work. The goals describe what the förskola should give children the opportunity to develop, not what the children should achieve.
| Area | What it means day to day |
|---|---|
| Care, development and learning | Play, security and every child developing at their own pace |
| Language and communication | Reading aloud, conversation, songs, rhymes, and support in the mother tongue |
| Mathematics | Counting, sorting, comparing, building, finding patterns, through play |
| Science and technology | Being outdoors, growing things, investigating, building, asking questions |
| Creativity | Painting, singing, dancing, acting, with no demands on the result |
| Children's influence | The children have a say, according to age |
| Förskola and home | Working with you, progress meetings, settling in |
Play is the method
The most important word in the curriculum is play. Children learn language by playing shop, mathematics by dividing up building blocks and science by pouring water into the sand. The curriculum doesn't call for lessons, it calls for staff who see the learning in the play and feed it. A förskola where the children play all day can be a förskola that follows the curriculum to the letter.
That is also why a förskola that shows off letter drills and sums worksheets for three-year-olds doesn't necessarily follow the curriculum better than one that doesn't. The curriculum says teaching should start from the children's interests and experiences. A child who learns to count to ten because they want to know how many cars they have learns it in a way that sticks. A child who fills in a sums worksheet learns to fill in sums worksheets.
How to spot the curriculum in the weekly newsletter
| What the staff write | What the children did | Curriculum area |
|---|---|---|
| We have explored volume and quantity | Poured water between jars at the water table | Mathematics |
| We are working on language awareness | Rhymed, clapped syllables, read the same book three days running | Language and communication |
| The children have been involved in the planning | Voted on which park to go to | Children's influence |
| We have investigated friction | Gone down the slide on different surfaces and talked about why | Science and technology |
| We have been working on our core values | Talked about what to do when someone is left out | Norms and values |
What the curriculum says about you
A whole section is about förskola and home. The förskola must work with you, give you the chance to have a say, and hold a Parent-teacher meetings at förskola at least once a year. You should be told how the activities are planned, and you should be able to influence them. In practice that means you have the right to ask how they think, why they do what they do and what they have seen in your child, without it counting as interfering. A förskola that finds questions tiresome is not following that part of the curriculum.
The curriculum also says that Settling in at förskola should give the child a secure start, that the transition to förskoleklass (the preschool year before year 1) should be prepared together with you, and that the förskola should take into account that families look different.
What you can ask at the förskola
- How do you work with children's influence at this age?
- How do you document, and can we see the documentation?
- How do you support children with another mother tongue?
- How much time do the children spend outdoors, and what do they do there?
- What does a day look like, from drop-off to pick-up?
- What is your focus this term, and why that in particular?
What the curriculum is not
It is not a list of what a child should be able to do at four. There are no such requirements in Swedish preschool, and a förskola that says your child is behind is not using the curriculum to back that up. Nor is it a timetable: how many singing sessions there are in a week, how long the children are outdoors, what rest time looks like, the förskola decides for itself. And it is not a guarantee. Two förskolor can follow the same curriculum and be completely different to attend, because it is the staff who make the difference, not the document.
The curriculum and the afternoon at home
The curriculum ends at pick-up, but the child doesn't. What works at förskola, reading aloud, singing, play with an adult who is present, is exactly what a good nanny does in the afternoon. Our nannies read, sing, do crafts and go outdoors, and because it is the same person every time she knows where the child is in their development.
How we do it with our families
We ask our nannies to talk to the förskola staff at pick-up. How has the day been, what has the child been playing, is there anything going on. It is five seconds that connect the afternoon to the morning, and it is easier when the staff recognise the nanny. Doaa picks up a four-year-old in Barkarby on Mondays and Wednesdays, and when the group was working on rhymes in September she took it home with her: rhymes in Arabic in the car, because the family speaks Arabic at home and the förskola had asked parents for words in the mother tongue. The four-year-old turned up with three new rhymes for the teacher on Tuesday. That is the curriculum's section on the mother tongue, in practice, without anyone calling it that.
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Read more: The Convention on the Rights of the Child in Swedish preschool · Parent-teacher meetings at förskola · Settling in at förskola · FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is the preschool curriculum called?
Lpfö 18, läroplan för förskolan, in force since 1 July 2019. It replaced Lpfö 98, which had been revised several times, and it is decided by the government. Skolverket (the Swedish National Agency for Education) publishes it and it can be read free of charge on Skolverket's website. It is around twenty pages and can be read in an evening, even though it is written for the staff.
Is the curriculum binding?
Yes. All förskolor, municipal and independent, must follow it. It sets goals to work towards, not grades or requirements for what individual children should be able to do. Skolinspektionen (the Swedish Schools Inspectorate) checks that förskolor work according to it, and the municipality supervises the independent ones. A förskola that doesn't work according to the curriculum can be required to change what it does.
Are there grades or assessments in förskola?
No. The förskola documents the child's development in order to support it, not to assess or compare. That is an important difference from school. The curriculum says explicitly that it is the activities that are to be evaluated, not the children. If you are told your child is behind or ahead in something, those are the staff's words, not the curriculum's.
How much teaching is there in förskola?
The curriculum uses the word teaching, but means learning through play, conversation and everyday situations. There are no lessons, and there shouldn't be. Teaching in förskola is when a preschool teacher deliberately does something so the children will learn, such as counting the plates when laying the table or reading the same book three days in a row and talking about it.
What does the curriculum say about the mother tongue?
That children with a mother tongue other than Swedish should be given the opportunity to develop both their Swedish and their mother tongue. The förskola must also support children with national minority languages in developing them. How that is done in practice varies: sometimes staff who speak the language, sometimes books, songs and inviting the parents in. Ask how your förskola does it.