by Inger Lise Stieng
Setting
Norway with a bit more than 4 million inhabitants organises national
compulsory education from the age of 7 to 16. Traditionally the
population has been Lutheran. Immigration and internationalisation
has developed Norway into a more pluralistic country with a mixture
of religious groups. Immigrants are concentrated in the big cities,
mainly Oslo where nearly 30 per cent of the children have a foreign
language as their mother tongue.
Compulsory education is divided in two sections:
Primary school from 7 to 13 and lower secondary from 14 to 16. Upper
secondary education from age 16-19 is given as an opportunity to all,
with the possibility to choose between two main streams -academic and
vocational. The school system is mainly public. Although there are
possibilities for establishing private schools with state grants,
less than 2-3 per cent of the pupils use this possibility.
Ethical issues
The educational system has a social democratic ethos as its
value basis with an emphasis on the equality of access and
possibilities to all individuals, regardless of socio-economic
background, sex, geography or aptitudes. In practice, this means that
all pupils are allowed promotion through different levels up till
upper secondary education, regardless of academic achievement or
competencies achieved.
Organisational Issues
The Ministry of Education is responsible for the development of
national curricula both for primary, lower and upper secondary
education and for national examinations. Teacher education is based
on curricula and regulations given nationally while LEAs are
responsible for delivering the national curriculum in the school
system. The counties and the municipalities are given state grants to
their different sectors -education included- all in a bag and decide
priorities and preferences locally when money is allocated to
different sectors.
Plans and investment schedules for ICT are made and funded locally,
but in-service training programs for teachers are often developed as
combined national and local efforts.
The Ministry of education developed in 1995 an action plan for the
integration of ICT in the school system putting national (small)
money in a program lasting from 1996-99.
ICT and the curriculum
In 1997 a new national curriculum has been introduced for primary and
lower secondary education and primary education has been extended to
6-year-old children. In the new curriculum ICT is integrated as part
of different subjects on all levels. It is emphasised that children
shall develop competencies both regarding ICT in itself and as a tool
for learning.
Access to PCs, Internetting, the use of e-mail and databases and
word-processing are competence-areas to be developed and put into use
in project-work and other activities.
In addition to the action-plan and the new curricula, the government
has revised pre-service-training of teachers in order to strengthen
teacher qualifications in ICT. In -97 a new centre for ICT and
pedagogics is given national responsibility for developing and
co-ordinating activities related to ICT and learning issues in the
educational system.
Still Norway has a long way to go before ICT-related activities are
integrated in the daily life of a classroom. Less than a quarter of
primary schools are for the moment connected to Internet compared to
around half of the lower secondary schools. Nearly all upper
secondary schools are connected and their local standard are usually
on a much higher level with local school networks.
The English language in Norway
Norway has three official languages in compulsory education:
bokmål, nynorsk and samian language. English as a foreign
language is taught from 1 class in primary education from -97.
The fluency in English for all pupils in Norway is strengthened by
the exposure of English in general in Norwegian society through
television, films and mass media in general, games and "edutainment"
products. Most of them are capable of operating English versions of
software and applications without much difficulty.
Conclusion
ICT has been intensively focused the last two years and access to or
competence in the use of ICT is given status and reward in society.
However, teachers already operating in the educational system are
rather unqualified to address the new challenges in curricula and the
action plan. Thus, there is a danger in the individual schools for
leaving the ICT challenges to individual, enthusiastic teachers and
not making them part of the institutionalised and collective effort
for school innovation.
last update: March 3 1998
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