The Swedish government decided to strengthen the national curriculum in regards to digital skills. A measure that will change the curriculum in compulsory and upper secondary schools.

As from July 1^st, digital skills are an essential part of the Sweden national curriculum in compulsory and upper secondary schools. With this decision the government aims at strengthening the digital knowledge of students and teachers.

To this purpose, digital education aspects are integrated following compulsory subjects such as Biology, Physics, Geography, History, Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Technology. Also in upper secondary school digital education aspects are integrated into the several subjects: History, Mathematics, Science, Religion, Social Studies, Swedish and Swedish as a second language.

How will the changes concretely take place? Students should be able to solve problems and translate ideas into action in a creative way using digital technology; they will work with digital text, media and tools and understand the impact of digital transformation on individuals and society.

Digital competences are defined by the European Commission as "the confident, critical and responsible use of, and engagement with, digital technologies for learning, at work, and for participation in society. It includes information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation (including programming), safety (including digital well-being and competences related to cybersecurity), and problem solving".

The Swedish government's decision is in line with a Digital Education Action Plan adopted by the Commission in January 2018. The Plan's broad objective is to support technology-use and digital competence development in education. How? Through the achievement of three priorities in Member States: making better use of digital technology for teaching and learning, developing digital competences and skills, Improving education through better data analysis and foresight.

As a matter of fact, there is in fact an urgent need to boost digital competences in Europe. Here is the situation, as reported by the The Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI):

• 37% of the EU workforce has low digital skills or none at all.
• Less than half of children are in schools which are highly equipped digitally.
• Only 20-25% of them are taught by teachers who are confident using technology in the classroom.
• 18% of primary and secondary schools in the EU were not connected to broadband.

Swedish is a country where a National Coalitions for Digital Skills and Jobs is well established. National Coalition is an innovative partnership between digital skills' organisation that work to develop digital skills at national or local level and to tackle the lack of digital skills.