The SMUL Academy is an online school run by the Association of Swedish Beyond Borders – SMUL. The academy is created to increase opportunities for children and teenagers in all corners of the world to study Swedish, as well as learn more about Swedish society, geography and history.

During the school year of 2021-2022, there were 280 students from all over the world studying Swedish at the SMUL Academy.

The SMUL Academy offers distance education for children and young people with varying degrees of Swedish. There are two tracks of Swedish courses:

• Complimentary Swedish, as defined by the Swedish Department of Education

• Beginner Swedish, i.e. Swedish as a Second Language.

During the school year of 2021-2022, we also ran preparatory classes for complimentary Swedish. The two classes we ran had students who could speak and understand Swedish, but who also never had studied reading and writing in Swedish. They often read at a simpler level that is not age-appropriate, and would often also write phonetically.

Our Swedish courses can over time lead to our students gaining an academic level of Swedish. Most of our students study Swedish because it is an important part of their identity and to build and get close in their relationships with family members in Sweden.

Our courses are governed by the internal SMUL Academy’s pedagogical plan, which has been developed by our Advisory Committee led by SMUL’s Senior Expert Monica Bravo Granström.