The short answer
Yes. A student with dyslexia, ADHD, or another disability can have the national tests (nationella prov) adapted to their needs. Skolverket, the National Agency for Education, is explicit about it: “Det är rektorn som beslutar om anpassningar” (it is the principal who decides on adaptations), and “det krävs inte att eleven har en formell diagnos för att provgenomförandet ska kunna anpassas” (a formal diagnosis is not required for the test to be adapted).
That last point matters, and it is the same principle that runs through the rest of the support system: support at school is decided by need, not by a label.
The one rule everything else follows from
There is a single principle that decides whether any given adaptation is allowed. The test must still measure what it is meant to measure. Skolverket puts it this way: the school should make the adaptation “så att provet fortfarande prövar de kunskaper och de förmågor som respektive delprov avser att pröva” (so that the test still assesses the knowledge and abilities that each subtest is intended to assess).
So the question is never simply “does this student have dyslexia.” It is “does this adaptation still let the test measure the thing it is testing.” That is why the same adaptation can be allowed in one situation and forbidden in another.
Why listening to the text is allowed in year 9 but not year 3
The clearest example is the reading-comprehension subtest. In year 9, decoding text is assumed to be an already-developed skill, so a student can listen to the texts as an adaptation: “En enskild elev i årskurs 9 kan därför, som anpassning, få lyssna till texterna.” The test is measuring comprehension, not decoding, so listening does not undermine it.
In years 3 and 6, the same adaptation is not allowed, because at those ages the test is partly assessing decoding itself. Letting a student listen would mean “provet inte längre prövar det som provet är avsett att pröva” (the test no longer assesses what it is meant to assess). Same student, same need, opposite answer, because the thing being measured is different. This is the specific limit the dyslexia organisations have long criticised, and it is worth understanding rather than assuming a school is refusing support.
Aids the student already uses
If a student uses an aid in everyday teaching, that is the strongest basis for using it on the test. Where a student’s åtgärdsprogram sets out aids to be used in teaching, the principal can decide the student may use the same type of aid during the national test, again, as long as the test still measures what it should: “Rektorn kan besluta att eleven får använda samma typ av hjälpmedel under nationella provet om provet fortfarande prövar det som det är avsett att pröva.”
This is why the everyday picture matters so much. A test adaptation is not supposed to be invented on exam day. It is meant to mirror how the student already works.
When a test can be skipped
The national tests are mandatory. But they are not absolute. If there are special reasons, the principal can decide that a student is exempted from a subtest or a whole test: “om det finns särskilda skäl kan rektorn besluta att en elev undantas från att genomföra ett delprov eller ett prov.” Exemption is the last option, not the first, and it is still the principal’s decision.
What this means in practice
Three things follow from the rules, and all three are about the school knowing the student.
- The decision is individual. Skolverket is clear that you cannot say all students with reading and writing difficulties have the same needs. The adaptation has to fit this student.
- The decision should be grounded in what the student already does. The cleanest basis for a test adaptation is an aid or a way of working the student already uses in teaching, ideally already documented.
- The decision has to preserve the test’s purpose. That is a judgement, made per subtest, about what is actually being measured.
A school that has a clear, current picture of how each student works, what they use, what is written in their åtgärdsprogram, what helps them read or focus, walks into the national tests able to make these decisions quickly and defensibly. A school that does not is left reconstructing it under time pressure. Keeping that per-student picture accurate and ready is exactly what Nuro is built to do, so that when the test comes, the adaptation a student is entitled to is already known, not improvised. It is one more place where the right to support exists but the system to deliver it lags behind.