- 2020Design
- 2021Completed
Background
There have been no fundamental changes in upper secondary education since a reform in 1994 and students still have the same offer and organisation of education as they did 20 years ago. The county council's responsibility for upper secondary education and the principles of tripartite cooperation in vocational training between national authorities, school owners and working life have also been largely the same since 1994.
There are major challenges with the current model, including:
- the dropout rate at upper secondary level, after five years, has been around 25% every year since 1994, despite a number of efforts and pilots over the years;
- the dropout rate is particularly high in the vocational programmes, and there is a lack of apprenticeships places. In recent years, about 22 % of the pupils could not sign an apprenticeship contract;
- upper secondary education has over the years been subjected to major and minor adjustments to address various challenges. The result is that the requirements for general study competence vary.
A committee was appointed to look into the challenges in September 2017.
Objectives
The objectives are specific proposals from the committee for changes in structure, organisation and subject composition in upper secondary education.
Description
The committee has assessed:
- whether upper secondary education has a structure and content that enables as many students as possible to complete upper secondary education;
- whether the current model for upper secondary education complies with the needs of working life and society for competence;
- whether the current model adequately promotes a desire to learn and motivation;
- the need for changes in the division of responsibilities between national authorities, school owners and working life;
- the need to expand schemes for those with lower-level competence;
- how to make the best possible arrangements for adults to obtain formal qualifications.
The committee has arranged a number of input rounds and relevant partners have contributed to the process. The committee has conducted a number of school visits, company visits and interviews.
A reference group, consisting of the social partners, the School Student Union of Norway, representatives from higher education and the teacher organisations, has also contributed to the work.
The committee delivered a partial recommendation in the autumn of 2018 (NOU2018:15 kvalifisert, forberedt og motivert), and a main recommendation in December 2019 (NOU2019:25 Med rett til å mestre). The main recommendation is at public consultation, with a deadline of 1 July 2020.
The Ministry of Education and Research announced that it would present a white paper on upper secondary education to the Storting (the Norwegian Parliament) during the spring of 2021. The White paper was published on 26 March 2021.
Bodies responsible
- Ministry of Education and Research (KD)
Target groups
Learners
- Learners in upper secondary, including apprentices
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 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.
Supporting lifelong learning culture and increasing participation
Lifelong learning refers to all learning (formal, non-formal or informal) taking place at all stages in life and resulting in an improvement or update in knowledge, skills, competences and attitudes or in participation in society from a personal, civic, cultural, social or employment-related perspective (Erasmus+, Glossary of terms, https://erasmus-plus.ec.europa.eu/programme-guide/part-d/glossary-common-terms). A systemic approach to CVET is crucial to ensure adaptability to evolving demands.
This broad thematic category looks at ways of creating opportunities and ensuring access to re-skilling and upskilling pathways, allowing individuals to progress smoothly in their learning throughout their lives with better permeability between general and vocational education and training, and better integration and compatibility between initial and continuing VET and with higher education. Individuals should be supported in acquiring and updating their skills and competences and navigating easily through education and training systems. Strategies and campaigns that promote VET and LLL as an attractive and high-quality pathway, providing quality lifelong guidance and tailored support to design learning and career paths, and various incentives (financial and non-financial) to attract and support participation in VET and LLL fall into this thematic category as well.
This thematic category also includes many initiatives on making VET inclusive and ensuring equal education and training opportunities for various groups of learners, regardless of their personal and economic background and place of residence – especially those at risk of disadvantage or exclusion, such as persons with disabilities, the low-skilled and low-qualified, minorities, migrants, refugees and others.
This thematic sub-category refers to ensuring smooth transitions (permeability) of learners within the entire education and training system, horizontally and vertically. It includes measures and policies allowing learners easily or by meeting certain conditions to move from general education programmes to VET and vice versa; to increase qualification levels in their vocation through the possibility of attending vocational programmes at higher levels, including professional degrees in higher education. It also covers opening up learning progression by introducing flexible pathways that are based on the validation and recognition of the outcomes of non-formal and informal learning.
This thematic sub-category refers to providing the possibility for individuals who are already in the labour market/in employment to reskill and/or acquire higher levels of skills, and to ensuring targeted information resources on the benefits of CVET and lifelong learning. It also covers the availability of CVET programmes adaptable to labour market, sectoral or individual up- and reskilling needs. The sub-category includes working with respective stakeholders to develop digital learning solutions supporting access to CVET opportunities and awarding CVET credentials and certificates.
Subsystem
Further reading
Country
Type of development
Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Upper secondary education review (NOU 2019: 25): Norway. In Cedefop, & ReferNet. (2025). Timeline of VET policies in Europe (2024 update) [Online tool].
https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/sv/tools/timeline-vet-policies-europe/search/29084