Addressing the quality and equity of a country’s education system can help shape its future. A thriving education system allows every student the opportunity to develop as an individual and strengthens a society’s capacity for economic growth and well-being. Norway operates a comprehensive welfare system with high levels of public social expenditures. Education is considered as a priority, and Norway is one of the OECD countries investing the most in its education system, while emphasising equity and inclusion. Overall, Norway is committed to an education system that promotes the development and learning of all its students.
Norway has implemented a number of reforms and policies towards realising this ambition – and as the evidence suggests with some noteworthy successes (Government of Norway, 2017[1]). For instance, the results of the PISA 2015 survey showed a positive development in the average performance of Norwegian students, which is now above the OECD average in all three disciplines (science, mathematics, and reading) (OECD, 2016[2]). This is also confirmed at earlier stages of education (TIMSS, 2015[3]; PIRLS, 2016[4]). Norway is set on continuing this positive development in student performance, but recognises there still are challenges and great differences between schools in municipalities and between municipalities and regions (Government of Norway, 2017[1]).
One of the areas in need of focus is teachers and schools professional development. Available data from 2013 showed that there was lower participation in professional development than the TALIS average and higher than average unsatisfied demand. In PISA 2015, principals reported that about 20% of students are enrolled in schools where inadequate or poorly qualified teachers hinders learning (around the OECD average), and about 50% of students attend schools where teachers not meeting individual student’s needs hinders learning (twice the OECD average) (OECD, 2016[5]). There already exists a strategy for individual credit giving professional development (the Competence for Quality programme). However, the Norwegian government considers that a new decentralised model promoting collaborative professional development could help cater to the different needs of teachers regarding the variety of contexts in Norway.
Part of the challenge lies in the series of devolution reforms and decentralisation processes that have transformed the structure of the Norwegian education system during the last decades. How to balance local autonomy with public accountability while ensuring local capacity for continuous improvement in the learning of all students is a complex challenge; one that policy makers across OECD countries have been grappling with for years – and this includes Norway (Government of Norway, 2017[1]). Through reforms and national programmes, such as the Knowledge Promotion Reform (2006), the Assessment for Learning Programme (2010), or the Initial Teacher Education (2011), Norway aimed to reinforce the roles and capacity of stakeholders at all levels of the system to lead and engage in systematic improvements to ensure the success of all its students.
More recently, the White Paper n.21 “Desire to learn - early intervention and quality in schools” (2017[1]) suggests that individual national competence development initiatives do not provide for enough local adaptation, and municipalities and county authorities have varying capacity and expertise to engage in quality development for schools. With the White Paper, the Norwegian Government aims to provide municipalities and schools with greater freedom of action and empower them to carry out systematic school improvements at the local level. It introduces the new competence development model for schools to develop collaborative professionalism at every layer of the education system. In this new model for locally based competence development, national funding for school-based sustainable capacity building and continuous professional development at all levels of the system is based on a local analysis and decision making in networks of municipalities (hereafter referred to as “the new model”). This whole-school approach aims for continuous professional development to be integrated into daily practice and municipalities taking responsibility for the development of their schools by engaging in networked collaborations at the local and regional level. The partnerships with universities and colleges is considered essential for making this happen (Government of Norway, 2017[1]).
The ambitions set out in the White Paper n.21 that introduces the new model are an attempt to ‘flip the governance’ from government steering to greater leading from the local level, and aim to substantially change roles and introduce a whole new way of working for stakeholders. It calls for carefully thought out implementation strategy to turn this policy into effective changes in the classroom. This includes the elements of effective governance as described in the OECD Governing Complex Educations Systems Project (Burns and Köster, 2016[6]; Burns, Köster and Fuster, 2016[7]): strategic thinking and shared vision building, careful monitoring and evaluation to make evidence-informed decision making and the readiness to quickly adapt to changing contexts and new knowledge. But it also involves the need to design the policies smartly, to create a conducive context, to follow a coherent implementation strategy and to engage with stakeholders throughout the process. In complex education systems, “implementation” is not about executing the policy, but more about building and fine-tuning it collaboratively (Viennet and Pont, 2017[8]).