I just stumbled across the application form that I sent to the local community about two years ago.

It is about mother tongue education in pre-school. On the backside of the application form I found the following information:

“The national curriculum for pre-school education states that children with a mother tongue other than Swedish should be given the opportunity to develop their mastery of that mother tongue as well as the mastery of the majority language. There can be a mother tongue teacher specialising in teaching mother tongue at pre-school level who meets the children o­nce or twice every week and leads them in activities such as singing, drawing, play, cutting and gluing, playing games, reading nursery stories in the children’s mother tongue. The mother tongue teacher might also lead the whole of the pre-school class in traditional songs and games, thus “translating” the culture for the children from a Swedish background while at the same time strengthening the sense of identity of the children they are working with. Studies have shown that if children are given the chance to develop their mother tongue skills from pre-school age, their academic performance at school will be better; their mother tongue proficiency functions as a bridge between the language spoken at school and the language they speak at home.”