Students stay at home
Studying usually means living away from mom and dad for the first time and dealing with it. But today in Sweden a third of all students refrain from taking student loans, much less than 10 years ago. CSN (Centrala studiestödsnämnden – the Swedish Government authority in charge of financial aid for studies and home equipment loans) believes it’s because young people stay at home and get support from their parents. “The explanation must be that parents today give more support,” says Magnus Forss, director of CSN’s statistics. “Today there’s a generation of parents who more than before can afford to help their children financially.” The percentage of students who decide to take loans decreased from 82% to 67.5% between 2000 to 2010. That some students decide to remain at home might not only have to do with saving money, it may also be due to the lack of student housing.

Few male teachers at Swedish preschools
There's a lack of male teachers at Swedish preschools. And the least men, less than 3%, are employed at the municipal preschools. The problem is not a new one, for decades it’s been difficult to find male teachers at preschools though a small “peak” was reached (4%) in the beginning of the 1980’s. However, in 2000 there were only 1.9% men teaching at preschools, today the percentage is up a bit again at 3.5%. The “friskolor” (independent schools) have since the 1990’s had a much higher representation of male teachers. “I think it may be because when they opened their business they actively chose men,” says Agneta Jönk, director of the Employment Department at the Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions). The average salary for a preschool teacher is slightly higher for women than for men. Perhaps a change is coming though, as the percentage of men choosing to study to become preschool teachers is higher than the percentage of men currently teaching at them – 7.7%. In most OECD countries the percentage of men teaching at preschools is under 10, but there are countries that differ from the norm. In Canada, France and Denmark 20 to 25% of the preschool teachers are men.

Fox in laundry
Räven raskade i… tvättmaskinen. Or fox on the run… in the washing machine. The Laine family in Bräcke got the surprise visit of their lives, when they found a fox in their washing machine. “Our dog ran into our laundry room barking, that’s when we heard something hiss, the children then noticed the fox,” says mom Anita Laine. An older daughter had noticed the fox on the terrace earlier, and not much later the poodle Alfons sniffed it out in the laundry room. “That’s very unusual,” says Jessica Backeryd, field director responsible for wild life in Jämtland. “I don’t know why the fox would act that way, it was probably a curious young fox who smelled good things to eat.”