- 2020Legislative process
- 2021Legislative process
- 2022Completed
Background
The Education Act (relating to primary and secondary education and training, including VET at EQF level 4) was published in 1998 as a result of great changes in primary and secondary education. Since 1998 it has been amended several times, on average more than once a year. All the changes meant that there was a need for a comprehensive review of the act and how it was used. The government has established an Education Act Committee, with the mandate to look at the regulations for primary and secondary education. The committee was created on 22 September 2017 and submitted proposals for new regulations on 1 December 2019.
Objectives
The aim of the review is to develop a set of rules that safeguards the objectives and principles of primary and secondary education, while at the same time ensuring that the municipalities and county municipalities, as school owners, have sufficient flexibility to promote quality development in schools.
Description
The committee proposed a new education act, statutes, guidelines and general principles for the governing of primary and secondary education, including VET.
The committee assessed:
- what factors should be subject to regulation, what is the appropriate level of detail and what should respectively be regulated by law or regulation;
- how to simplify the regulations and facilitate efficient use of resources in primary and secondary education;
- how the regulations should be designed to reduce the need for changes and subsequent interpretations.
The proposals also included updating the inspection framework and guidance.
The public consultation process finished in July 2020.
In 2021, the new Education Act (NOU2019:23) was processed.
At the end of 2021, a public consultation for a proposal of a new Education Act was published. This Education Act was intended to replace the current one: the proposal was based on the report from the Education Act Committee (NOU 2019: 23 new Education Act) and the more than 700 comments that were registered in the consultation. Proposals from previous White papers have been incorporated. Much of the current law was suggested to continue, some rules have been removed, and some new rules have been introduced. The changes affect both general education and vocational education and training. The aim was to make the law work better for learners, both in terms of rights and readability.
The Education Act was adopted on 31 March.
Bodies responsible
- Ministry of Education and Research (KD)
Target groups
Learners
- Young people (15-29 years old)
Entities providing VET
- VET providers (all kinds)
Thematic categories
Governance of VET and lifelong learning
This thematic category looks at existing legal frameworks providing for strategic, operational – including quality assurance – and financing arrangements for VET and lifelong learning (LLL). It examines how VET and LLL-related policies are placed in broad national socioeconomic contexts and coordinate with other strategies and policies, such as economic, social and employment, growth and innovation, recovery and resilience.
This thematic category covers partnerships and collaboration networks of VET stakeholders – especially the social partners – to shape and implement VET in a country, including looking at how their roles and responsibilities for VET at national, regional and local levels are shared and distributed, ensuring an appropriate degree of autonomy for VET providers to adapt their offer.
The thematic category also includes efforts to create national, regional and sectoral skills intelligence systems (skills anticipation and graduate tracking) and using skills intelligence for making decisions about VET and LLL on quality, inclusiveness and flexibility.
This thematic sub-category refers to the integration of VET into economic, industrial, innovation, social and employment strategies, including those linked to recovery, green and digital transitions, and where VET is seen as a driver for innovation and growth. It includes national, regional, sectoral strategic documents or initiatives that make VET an integral part of broader policies, or applying a mix of policies to address an issue VET is part of, e.g. in addressing youth unemployment measures through VET, social and active labour market policies that are implemented in combination. National skill strategies aiming at quality and inclusive lifelong learning also fall into this sub-category.
This thematic sub-category refers to the ways VET is funded at the system level. Policies include optimisation of VET provider funding that allows them to adapt their offer to changing skill needs, green and digital transitions, the social agenda and economic cycles, e.g. increasing the funding for VET or for specific programmes. They can also concern changing the mechanism of how the funding is allocated to VET schools (per capita vs based on achievement or other criteria). Using EU funds and financial instruments for development of VET and skills also falls into this sub-category.
This thematic sub-category refers both to formal mechanisms of stakeholder engagement in VET governance and to informal cooperation among stakeholders, which motivate shared responsibility for quality VET. Formal engagement is usually based on legally established institutional procedures that clearly define the role and responsibilities for relevant stakeholders in designing, implementing and improving VET. It also refers to establishing and increasing the degree of autonomy of VET providers for agile and flexible VET provision.
In terms of informal cooperation, the sub-category covers targeted actions by different stakeholders to promote or implement VET. This cooperation often leads to creating sustainable partnerships and making commitments for targeted actions, in line with the national context and regulation, e.g. national alliances for apprenticeships, pacts for youth or partnerships between schools and employers. It can also include initiatives and projects run by the social partners or sectoral organisations or networks of voluntary experts and executives, retired or on sabbatical, to support their peers in the fields of VET and apprenticeships, as part of the EAfA.
Subsystem
Further reading
Country
Type of development
Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Education Act - 2021: Norway. In Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Timeline of VET policies in Europe (2024 update) [Online tool].
https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/lt/tools/timeline-vet-policies-europe/search/29075