Education in Norway. The choice is tough. For each of us, especially the parent, the education of our child is very important. We would like the school to which we will send our children to be able to pass on the necessary knowledge to the best possible extent. Get the best out of it. We would like the classes in the school of our choice not to waste valuable time on unnecessary and worthless items. Dream school right?
Quality of schools
A school with high-quality education is the dream of every parent, because we have known for a long time that a good education affects our lives. Currently, the quality of education is most often measured by standardized OECD PISA tests, i.e. by the International Program for Student Evaluation, where individual countries are properly ranked. Of course, the higher a given country is on the list, the higher the quality of education. Here, however, a very important question arises, namely, how much truth is there in all of this? Does a place on a given list 100% reflect the quality of education in a given country?
Education in Norway Rankings, and real life
On the Internet, you can collide with an avalanche of various studies that show where a given country ranks in terms of the level of education. Such reports usually evoke a lot of emotions in the recipients because we often meet with a different opinion of the interested parties. The fact that Finland has been in the first place for a long time, just like the Asian countries, does not raise any doubts in us.
However, many Poles are interested in the level of education in Norway, because that's where they made the decisions to live and raise their children. Well, in 2013, the second edition of TALIS (Teaching and Learning International Survey) took place, which is an international research program aimed at examining the learning environment and working conditions of teachers. More than 170 teachers from 34 countries and regions around the world participated in the study. Norway, unfortunately, does not rank high.
Here, of course, it should be remembered that the results of the research do not necessarily mean that Norwegian schools have a low level of education. In the research, teachers themselves most often answered the questions they were asked, and unfortunately they underestimate their value and their skills. The question is, what does this result from? The main issues that were developed were the teacher's ability to explain incomprehensible content to the student. And whether the teacher can correctly formulate questions to the student. Unfortunately, on these issues only four countries rated themselves worse than Norway itself.
Education in Norway Can a lack of self-confidence translate into learning?
In the TALIS studies, teachers were also tested on their ability to engage students in work and motivate them to learn. Teachers from Norway took third place from the bottom. Only 39% of respondents answered affirmatively that they can effectively engage students in classes. Mr. Olaf Aamodt, who was one of the researchers involved in the project, said. This results from a lack of sense of security and belief in the high quality of work performed. The question arises as to which teacher. It's not quite confident in the quality of the work he provides, can influence the student and his education?
Reality
As I mentioned earlier, many times people encounter a completely different reality than that presented by reports, studies, numbers, etc. Therefore, the entire Norwegian education should not be negatively assessed based on a few studies. However, I am very curious about your opinion and opinions about Norwegian education, is it as "as scary as they paint it"?
