Early educational support – an investment in the future

Speech by Kristin Halvorsen, Norwegian Minister of Education

 

Norway is a high-income country, with wage levels among the highest in the world. It is also a country with relatively low inequality. The prosperous economy is the main reason why Norway frequently is ranked first on the UN Human Development Index. Education policy has played a major role in developing the economy, and will be even more important in the years to come. It is estimated that human capital constitutes 70-80 percent of Norway’s national wealth. The importance of education is increasing as high-skilled and more productive labour replaces low-skilled occupations.

 

The flip side of this development is that educational failure has more severe consequences than ever, both for the individual and for society.  As productivity levels steadily increase, there is less room in the labour market for young people who, for some reason, have not obtained qualifications that give them access to the labour market or to higher education. This is reflected in the earnings statistics published by the OECD, showing that there is a huge difference in lifetime earnings in Norway between men with only compulsory schooling and men with upper secondary qualifications such as plumbers, electricians and carpenters.

 

In Norway we started measuring drop-out from upper secondary education in 1994, and the statistics tell us that the development has not been in the right direction. Throughout the whole period, we find that only 70 percent of each cohort successfully completes upper secondary education within five years after entry. Some complete later, but still we find that around 20 percent of the adult population have left education without necessary qualifications. Recent research shows clear evidence that these people face a high risk of criminal behaviour, exclusion from the labour market, dependency on public benefits and low income. The cost of drop-out for society is estimated at around 3 billion Euros a year.

 

Educational failure is not only an economical problem. It reduces the individual’s opportunities for lifelong personal development and is commonly associated with negative outcomes in areas such as health, democratic participation and interpersonal trust.

 

Educational failure does not hit randomly and without a warning. Statistics and research shows clearly that most students who drop out have been struggling at school for years. We also know that students from socially disadvantaged backgrounds are particularly at risk. Our education system has shown an unfortunate acceptance of low achievement and “wait and see” attitude to educational intervention. The result is that around 20 percent of the children leave compulsory school after 10 years without the necessary basic literacy and numeracy skills.

 

Research has so far provided us with an overwhelming amount of evidence of problems and shortcomings, but has been less helpful when it comes to finding solutions. Numerous evaluation reports show that many large scale governance reforms such as incentives, school choice and accountability have limited effect on students’ achievements, and some measures may even jeopardize equity. Other reforms – in particular reduced class sizes – are extremely expensive relative to the effect they have on student outcomes.  

 

What really seem to matter most when it comes to combating educational failure are effective teaching practices and early intervention. The challenge for policy makers is that we have very limited opportunities to impact on what goes on in the classrooms. But what we can do is to provide the necessary economical and pedagogical resources and other infrastructure that schools and teachers need in order to do a good job. Policy makers also have the responsibility and privilege to remove all unnecessary workload off the schools, instead of steadily increasing their workload.

 

During the past few years, the Norwegain government has made some changes that we believe will have a positive impact on achievement and equity in primary schools, in order to lay the foundation for reducing the drop-out in upper secondary education. Early intervention is the main strategy. This entails both intervening at an early age and taking action at an early stage when problems arise during the course of the education. The basis for this strategy was laid down in Report No. 16 (20062007) to the Storting: Early Intervention for Lifelong Learning. The Report was inspired by the works by Nobel Prize winner in economics, Professor James J. Heckman, on the importance of early childhood investment.

 

A large scale expansion of pre-primary education combined with reduced fees has increased participation in the age group 1-5 from 62 percent in 2000 to 88 percent in 2009. In particular, participation has increased significantly for minority language children and children with low parental education levels. We know that these children are the ones that benefit the most in terms of language and cognitive development in pre-primary education. Measures have also been introduced in order to recruit more pre-school teachers in order to maintain the quality in our kindergartens.

 

A second measure for early intervention is to increase the funding and number of teaching hours at grades 1-4 in primary school. From the school year 2010/11 we also introduce homework assistance.  

 

In general Norwegian students are positive about their school experience and feel a sense of belonging. Compared to children in primary schools however, young students in lower secondary schools experience a dip in their commitment to school. This level of schooling has been somewhat overlooked in recent years.  We are currently investigating lower secondary education (grades 8-10) with the aim of launching measures to increase motivation and school interest in this age group. The problem is a complex one. Some children are not being challenged enough; others are having a hard time keeping up and are gradually losing faith in their own abilities.

 

The solution is two-fold: We need to ensure that all students are equipped with the necessary skills and we need to make the teaching more relevant, authentic and challenging for the students. Young people need to both master basic skills while also being exposed to a rich curriculum and different ways of learning, including more hands-on activities. In order to move towards a more relevant lower secondary school, we are now looking at ways to encourage schools to work closer with local businesses and society.    

 

The largest change will come in teacher education. Norway is one of a few countries with one common general teacher training for all compulsory school (grades 1-10). Starting this year, teacher education will become more specialised with separate teacher education for grades 1-7 and 5-10 respectively. In order to equip teachers with more knowledge on effective teaching, we are expanding funding for educational research and establishing a knowledge center for education.

 

With these measures, we want to make sure that all children and youth get the appropriate help when they need it, so that they enter upper secondary education equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills for educational success. We want to accomplish this goal by building on the strengths of the Norwegian education system which have been documented by various international and national surveys: We have relatively low levels of inequality and segregation between schools, we have students who generally like going to school, teachers with high levels of job satisfaction and good relations between students and teachers. We will not jeopardise these qualities by introducing more competition between schools, teachers or students, or similar market inspired reforms which have proven to have limited effect on student outcomes.