The Norwegian Education Mirror 2022

In the 2021–2022 school year, there were 635,000 pupils in primary and lower secondary schools. In the past ten years, the number of pupils has been rather stable on a national level, but there are large regional variations. In Oslo, the number of pupils has risen 14 per cent in the last ten years, while there has been an 8 per cent decrease in Nordland over that same period.

Fewer, larger primary and lower secondary schools

The tendency in Norway is for fewer but larger schools. There were 2,761 primary and lower secondary schools in Norway in the 2021-2022 school year, which is 240 fewer than ten years ago. During the 2021–2022 school year, there was an average of 230 pupils per school; this is 25 higher than the figure from ten years ago.

More and more of the larger schools are now open, and fewer of the smallest schools. Today, 192 schools have 500 or more pupils. This number is 61 higher than ten years ago. It is the small schools in particular which are being closed down. In 2021, the schools that closed had an average of 92 pupils in the last year they were operational.

School sizes vary greatly county by county

• In Troms og Finnmark and Nordland, over half of schools have less than 100 pupils.
• In Oslo, 40 per cent of schools have 500 or more pupils, which is a 30 per cent increase from 2012.
• In Troms og Finnmark, only one school has over 500 pupils.

Since 2012, an average of 48 schools have closed, and 24 have opened, each year. 9 per cent of the schools that have closed in the last ten years are lower primary schools. Over the last ten years, the number of lower primary schools has halved. Scattered settlements result in higher expenses per pupil in primary and lower secondary school, as do low numbers of pupils per year and small schools. Even when expenses for transport are excluded, municipalities with small schools have higher expenses per pupil than municipalities with larger schools. Low pupil numbers and financial considerations in the municipality can therefore be reasons as to why a school is shut down.

More private primary and lower secondary schools

277 primary and lower secondary schools are private, which is around 10 per cent. On average, private schools are smaller than public schools, with 108 pupils per school compared with 243 pupils per school, meaning that only 4.6 per cent of pupils go to private schools. During the 2021-2022 school year, 29,000 pupils went to private primary and lower secondary schools. The number of private primary and lower secondary schools has increased by 84 over the past ten years.

The biggest private schools are mostly located in and around the largest towns and cities. In Oslo, 6 per cent of pupils go to private schools. The majority of private schools are approved on the basis of a life philosophy or a recognized pedagogical direction. In recently years, more vocational schools have been established. The majority of vocational schools have sports as their specialism, while others have entrepreneurship or science.

22 new schools were opened in 2021-2022, 9 of them private. In the last ten years, 106 public and 138 private primary and lower secondary schools have opened. This means that 57 per cent of all new primary and lower secondary schools in the last ten years are private. In the same period, 91 per cent of the schools that closed were public. In all, the number of private schools has increased by 4 percentage points over the last ten years, from 2.7 per cent in 2011-2012.

Three of the new private schools are international schools, two have a sports specialism, two are Steiner schools, one is a Montessori school and one is a Christian school.

Public schools can be municipal, state, or county municipal. In total, there are 2,484 municipal primary and lower secondary schools and 8 state or county municipal primary and lower secondary schools.