Starting in the 2016/17 academic year, high school students in Norway who missed more than 10 percent of the hours in a given course without a medical excuse could not receive a final grade. We examine the impacts of this policy on student absenteeism, the incidence of the no grade penalty and two measures of student achievement. The policy had…

In recent years, exclusion rates in PISA have risen in many countries, including a sharper-than-average rise in Norway. This article focuses on Norway's experience with exclusion rates in PISA, including an analysis tracking this increase between 2000 and 2018. Through interviews with key stakeholders, this article explores several ideas that…

When the purified National Party (NP) came to power in South Africa in 1948, they introduced educational policies based on the ideology of apartheid. At that time 7,183 pupils attended primary education in 110 Lutheran Norwegian mission schools in Zululand and Natal. When the State took over these schools after the passing of the Bantu Education…

Despite great attention and numerous efforts across countries to reduce school dropout, it remains a persistent challenge. One such initiative, named New Possibilities, launched by the Norwegian Ministry in 2010, was a nationwide, flexible program aimed at providing intensive training to poor achievers during the last months of 10th grade, before…

A multicultural society that equates Christian and humanist values with human rights denies pluralism, placing human rights culture at risk. We examine Norwegian education policy discourses, noting human rights as a key feature of national identity, said to underpin schooling. Education policy maintains distinctions between those who embody…

Vocational education and training (VET) is a major policy topic for countries all over the world, who are eager to learn from the best examples where participation in VET is high and youth unemployment is low. Policymakers want to know how strong VET systems manage challenges like rapid technological change, matching labor market demand for…

This article focuses on the comparison of organizational antecedents of teachers' fostering of students' effort in two quite different accountability regimes: one management regime with an external-accountability system and one with no external accountability devices. The methodology involves cross-sectional surveys from two different management…

The article examines different understandings of school leadership in Norway by reporting the findings of a HEAD Project (2004-8). The article discusses how school leadership training in Norway has responded to the government's educational policy aims and strategies in the context of globalization. using the concept of "education value…