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Does a more expensive school produce better results?
The relationship between municipal school spending per pupil and actual school results.
Municipalities spend between SEK 90,000 and 200,000 per primary school pupil per year. But does higher spending automatically produce better results? When we combine Kolada's cost data with merit scores, socioeconomic measures and SALSA adjustment, a clear pattern emerges: it is far from the most expensive municipalities that always deliver best.
Cost per pupil vs merit score
The first chart poses the straightforward question: what does the municipality get back for every invested krona? If money alone drove results, the dots would form a clear upward slope. They do not.
Instead we see municipalities with relatively low costs and strong results, while some high-spending municipalities remain well below average. The colour shows teacher certification, suggesting that the quality of resources matters more than the size of the budget.
Cost and results are more weakly connected than many think. Colour shows teacher certification.
Open Kostnad vs Resultat fullscreen →Socioeconomic background — the hidden variable
A large part of the variation in school results is explained by municipalities' socioeconomic profiles — not by their investments in education. Municipalities with high median income and many university-educated residents systematically have better results. This makes it difficult to isolate the effect of school funding.
The chart shows how income, education level and independent school share co-vary with school results. Note how clear the pattern is — it is stronger than the relationship between cost and results.
Each bubble a municipality. Size = number of schools. Colour = independent school share.
Open Socioekonomisk korrelation fullscreen →SALSA: Which municipalities make the most of their conditions?
The SALSA model adjusts for pupils' backgrounds and shows which schools and municipalities perform better or worse than expected. Green municipalities on the map make more of their conditions. Red municipalities deliver below expectations — regardless of spending level.
The most interesting cases are municipalities with medium-level costs but green SALSA values. They show that it is less about money and more about how the money is used.
Green: performs above expectations. Red: below. Adjusted for pupil background.
Open SALSA-karta per kommun fullscreen →The data shows that the relationship between cost and results is weak. The most expensive municipalities do not have the best school results, and the cheapest do not necessarily have the worst. Socioeconomic background explains considerably more than raw budget levels.
The hopeful pattern emerges when we combine multiple perspectives: municipalities that perform better than demographics predict exist across all price brackets. This points to leadership, teacher competence and resource allocation as more important questions than the simple level of school funding.