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Sweden has decided to rewrite how schools give support. Here is what proposition 2025/26:195 changes.

This is decided law, not a proposal. The Riksdag approved proposition 2025/26:195, Förbättrat stöd i skolan (Improved support in school) on 3 June 2026, after the government submitted it on 17 March 2026. It reshapes how schools are required to give students support, and it takes effect on 1 July 2028.

That date is the part to hold on to. Nothing in a school changes because of this reform until then. Here is what it actually says, and what it means for the students who depend on the rules it replaces.

What the law changes

From the government’s own summary, the main measures are:

  • A clearer duty of ledning och stimulans. The Education Act will state explicitly that all children and students in teaching are to be given guidance and stimulation so that they can follow the teaching.
  • The early-support guarantee and the extra anpassningar regulation are abolished. In their place, standardized tests will be carried out at the start of the autumn term in certain year groups, to identify students who need support.
  • Early remedial teaching. Students will be given remedial teaching (stödundervisning) at an early stage in compulsory school, upper secondary, and adapted upper secondary, in Swedish, Swedish as a second language, and mathematics.
  • Changed rules on särskilt stöd. A responsible teacher or mentor will have to notify the principal when a student’s need for special support has to be investigated, and such needs are to be investigated earlier than today. Decisions to provide special support in a smaller teaching group or as individual teaching are made easier. A decision on an adapted study path (anpassad studiegång) may only be made once all other options for special support are exhausted or judged unsuitable.
  • Adult education. Teachers in municipal adult education will have access to, or the possibility of consulting, staff with special-needs teaching competence.

Why the government changed the rules

The bill was blunt about the problem it responds to. Its own analysis says a large share of students in compulsory and upper secondary school do not reach the goals, that results are weak in Swedish, Swedish as a second language and mathematics, and that the rules on extra anpassningar have not worked. It also argues there has been too one-sided a focus on the individual, and that the guarantee for early support has not worked as intended.

In other words, the reform does not remove the idea that students should get support. It restructures the machinery: less process around a named extra anpassningar step, earlier identification through testing, and earlier teaching for students who have fallen behind.

What it means for neurodivergent students

For students with NPF, the detail that matters most is timing. The outcome gap is already wide: Parliament’s own follow-up found only 62.4 percent of students with NPF reach eligibility for a vocational upper-secondary program, against 87.2 percent of their peers, and that formal särskilt stöd tends to arrive late. A reform built around earlier identification and earlier teaching is, at least on paper, aimed at that timing problem.

But earlier identification only helps if schools can act on it. Knowing in September that a student has fallen behind does not, by itself, give an overstretched teacher the hours to build adapted material for that student. That is the gap we keep coming back to: the distance between what the law asks for and what a teacher can actually deliver for thirty different students at once.

It is also worth being clear about what does not change before 1 July 2028. The current rules, including extra anpassningar and särskilt stöd as they stand today, remain in force until then. A school’s obligations to its neurodivergent students do not pause between a reform being decided and taking effect.

Nuro is built for exactly the capacity problem the reform leaves open: giving every student adapted, Skollagen-aligned support early and by default, without asking a teacher to build thirty versions of every lesson by hand. Whichever legal mechanism the support is delivered under, the work of actually delivering it stays the same. That is the part we build for.

What happens between now and 2028

Preparation is already an official mandate rather than something schools may get to. On 23 June 2026 the government gave Skolverket a formal assignment to “genomföra insatser för att stödja införandet av skolreformer”, to carry out measures that help schools put the reforms into practice. Improved support in school (Förbättrat stöd i skolan) is one of five reforms in that package, alongside new curricula and syllabi, a new grading system, stronger safety and study environment, and new rules on teachers’ teaching assignments. Skolverket is to give schools “tydligt och konkret stöd” and to account for the work in stages, with reporting dates of 2 November 2026, 1 June 2027, and a final report by 15 June 2029.

The practical message for schools is that the countdown to 1 July 2028 has started. What does not change is the point above: the duty to actually deliver adapted support to neurodivergent students runs the whole way through, and it does not lighten once the new rules arrive. That is the capacity problem Nuro is built for, whatever the legal mechanism ends up being called.

Sources

About Nuro

Support that meets Skollagen, for every neurodivergent student

Nuro helps Swedish schools give students with ADHD, autism, and dyslexia the adapted support the law already requires, and spot the ones at risk before they fall behind.

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