Every morning, more than 600 students take their backpacks and head to school. In 000, a 2020th grader had an average of 5 km to school and a 2,7th grader 10 km. The distance is shortest in Oslo and longest in Innlandet.
Education Act (lovdata.no) states that primary school pupils have the right to 'go to the nearest school or to a school in the vicinity'. But how far is school for Norwegian students?
The Norwegian Statistical Office has calculated the distance in kilometers and minutes for fifth and tenth grade students to their school.
Some pupils are entitled to free transport to school. This may be due to a disability or illness, especially a dangerous, difficult or long journey to school. Students in Years 5 and 10 are entitled to a school bus if the distance from home to the front door of the school is more than 4 km.
As the Norwegian Statistical Office has calculated the fastest route from pupils' home to school by car, nothing can be said about pupils' access to schools in practice. Statistics Norway's calculations show how far students live from the school they attend.
Throughout the period under review, grade 10 students traveled a greater average distance to school than grade 5 students. Half of grade 5 students traveled less than 1,6 km to school by car. For students in grade 10, the distance to school was 5 km. The reason why this distance is generally shorter for primary school students (year 5) than secondary school students (year 10) is that there are more primary schools than secondary schools. For many students, the journey to school will be longer as they enter high school.
The distance to travel will also vary greatly depending on where you live and where the school is located.
Students in Innlandet have the longest journey
The median commuting distance for fifth grade students in 2020 ranges from 1,1 km in Oslo to twice that in Innlandet. For Year 10 pupils - where the distances are generally greater than for Year 5 pupils - the distance varies from 4,5 km in Oslo to 6,6 km in Innlandet.
Across all age groups, in both grades 5 and 10, the longest median mileage in kilometers is for students who go to school in Innlandet. One in ten 10th graders who went to school in Innlandet in 2020 drove more than 30 km, with an estimated driving time of 32 minutes.
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For fifth-graders who went to school in Troms and Finnmark in 2020, the commute distance to school was also longer than in other fylkes. While half of the students had to travel less than 1,5 km, one in ten students had more than 8,2 km to school.
Even though the median driving distance for 10th grade students was the longest in Innlandet, the 10th children who went to school in Møre and Romsdal in 2020 covered almost the same distance. The average driving distance for 6th grade students in Møre and Romsdal was 8,5 kilometers and the estimated driving time was XNUMX minutes. The range in driving distance was also very large.
Oslo is the district with the consistently shortest driving distance to schools and there's a difference between students with the shortest and longest commuting distance to school was the smallest. Half of 10th graders in Oslo in 2020 walked less than 4,5 km to school, and half of 5th graders walked less than 1,1 km.
The shortest driving distance to the most central schools
How the central Norwegian municipalities are located also affects how long the commute is from home to school.
The shortest commute distance, 1,9 km, is for students from the most central areas. The driving distance increases the less central the municipality is.
In the most central areas, the average driving distance for 10th graders in 2020 is 5,8 km. In the least central communes it is even three times higher, with the driving distance extended from 2010 to 2020. In 2010 it was 15,4 km and in 2020 17,2 km.
The average driving distance for fifth grade students in the most central areas was 1,2 km in all three years. This means that half of the students in Oslo and the surrounding municipalities lived within 1,2 km of the school. In the least central communes, the median was about 2 km. For 4th grade students, the median distance to walk was between 4,6 and XNUMX km in Oslo and surrounding municipalities.
Students from smaller schools cover the longest distance
The smaller the school, the greater the average travel distance from students' homes. This is due to the fact that many of the smallest schools are less centrally located.
The average distance students from smaller schools traveled was 4,3 km in 2010, rising to 4,8 km ten years later. The driving distance for students in large schools with 300 or more students was halved and held steady between 2010 and 2020.
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Source: Statistics Norway
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