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Norway, officially known as the Kingdom of Norway, includes a large mainland, a variety of small islands, and other territories totaling 368,658 square kilometers (149,366 square miles). Located in northern Europe, Norway lies on the Scandinavian peninsula and is surrounded by three seas to the west and shares most of its eastern border with Sweden. The northern section of Norway experiences cold …
Just after independence from Denmark, the Storting committee was organized in 1815 to address all school matters. Before independence, Luther's focus on schooling was supported by ordinances in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and consequently, some schooling was available to children of all social classes for the purpose of religious development. These ordinances recogni…
The national school system is designed to provide a quality education to every citizen. Egalitarian values with respect to education are quite strong in Norway. In fact, the government attempts to provide the same quality education to absolutely every Norwegian, no matter how remote a community is or how few children it has. For example, the government spends twice as much per pupil in poor areas …
Kindergartens have come into popularity in Norway only recently. The number of children in kindergartens more than doubled in the 1980s, and there still are not enough schools. The dramatic increase seems to be due to a high rate of female employment outside of the home, the increase of single-parent families, and a demand by the public for more focus on basic instruction. About a third of eligibl…
Three years of upper secondary education are offered to students. Classic academic and vocational training programs were combined into a single comprehensive school as a result of the 1974 Upper Secondary School Law. This law was intended to eliminate any status differences between practical and theoretical kinds of education. With both vocational and general studies offered in the same school, al…
Norwegian universities offer programs of study at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Four universities and 26 state colleges, among a variety of other kinds of higher education institutions, are available to students in Norway. Smaller specialized colleges offer degree programs that are just two or three years in length, while university studies tend to be longer in duration. A small percenta…
Education is controlled and funded by the central government. Government regulations cover such issues as class size, length of school year, teaching obligations, and minimum number of lessons offered. Even teacher salaries are controlled by the central government as teachers are civil servants and, as such, must lobby public employee salary regulations to impact their pay. Of course, education is…
Nonformal education was widely available at the end of the nineteenth century as some young people, upon finishing folk school, wanted more yet did not want to participate in college preparatory programs. Clubs or groups revolving around literature, sports, and music developed. In 1999, adult education courses numbered 61,319, and 681,845 Norwegians participated in one of these courses. Participat…
Teacher training for compulsory education occurs mainly in teacher training colleges in a program that lasts four years. Primary school teachers were qualified after three years of schooling until 1992 when the training requirements were enhanced. It was felt that compulsory education teachers needed more depth and breadth in their subject education. The fourth year then became devoted to speciali…
Norway has achieved a remarkable educational system. Adult literacy exceeds 99 percent, and school expectancy for a five-year-old in Norway was 17.7 years in 1998, one of the highest school expectancy rates of any country. For Norwegians age 25- to 34-years-old, 93 percent have completed upper secondary education, a rate that compares with Japan and is among the best in the world. Norway excels in…
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