Previous research has identified that cognitive ability and socioeconomic status (SES) indicated by parental education, occupation, or income (Marks, 2013) are the strongest predictors of school outcomes. Cognitive ability is the strongest predictor of school achievement, with correlations around .60-.70 (Gustafsson & Balke, 1993), while SES typically correlates around .30-.40 with school achievement (Sirin, 2005). Longitudinal investigations of the strength of the associations concluded that the influence of SES is declining (Marks, 2013). However, in Sweden the strength of the association between SES and achievement has increased during the last decades (Gustafsson & Yang Hansen, 2018), suggesting that equity of schooling outcomes has deteriorated.

Another important factor influencing school outcomes is gender. Girls tend to outperform boys in terms of grades internationally (Dwyer & Johnson, 1997), and this is true for Swedish students as well. Even more concerningly, boys are more at risk of dropping out of school in Sweden (World Bank, 2024).

In Sweden, compulsory education ends in the school year 9, while in the optional upper secondary school, there are 18 regular national programs of three years to choose from, six of which are preparatory for higher education such as university, and twelve of which are vocational. While entrance requirements vary between programs, all of them demand students to have passing grades in Swedish/Swedish as a second language, English, an d mathematics from their final year of compulsory schooling.

The main question, which can be investigated for all birth cohorts between 1948 and 2004, is the relative importance of cognitive ability, social background, cultural background, and gender as determinants of school failure and general school achievement, and how this varies as a function of school characteristics and societal factors.

We define four levels of school failure: premature failure, i.e., no grades or low grades in year 6; early failure, i.e., no grades in year 9; midway failure, i.e., not eligible for upper secondary school, and late failure, i.e., no final grades/exam within three years of finishing upper secondary school. Starting with a basic model including grade point average (GPA) from compulsory school, along with cognitive abilities from grade 6 and background variables, predicting school failure. The differentiation of students into different programs will be dealt with through a dummy variable approach and/or through fitting separate models for different programs or groups of programs. As for the compulsory school model, explanatory variables will be added in the next step, using the same sources of information. Longitudinal data from two sources are used; the GOLD and the UGU databases which partially overlap in that the UGU participants in the seven birth cohorts 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1998, and 2004 also are included in GOLD. The data allow a large number of cohort comparisons, focusing on curricular and organizational aspects, and on societal changes such as increasing economic inequity and school segregation. Both comprehensive school and upper secondary school will be investigated.

The empirical results will be discussed in light of the educational research and political discourse that preceded the reforms, in which both gender and cognitive ability were considered to be of key importance. Along with descriptions of the changes in the school organization and school curricula, this study will contribute to an understanding of the three levels of curriculum (the intended, the implemented, and the achieved curriculum which in interplay with social and home background factors determine children’s opportunity to learn (McDonnell, 1995); and to the changes in the school system that followed with school reforms.

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