Draft amendments to the Vocational Education Act are currently being submitted for consultation. The Ministry of National Education will enable, among other things, vocational schools to obtain institutional accreditation. Thus, they will be able to change or establish new study programs on their own, without having to apply for permission.
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school vocational schools offer higher vocational education and contribute to meeting Norway's demand into specialists with specialized skills.
– We have already announced that we want vocational schools to be able to obtain institutional accreditation and I am glad that we can now submit it for consultation. This the government focuses on vocational schools, and this is an important step towards the further development of the sector, says Minister of Research and Higher Education Ola Borten Moe.
- This will contribute to the fact that vocational schools will be able to create courses more quickly in accordance with the needs of professional life, so that we have a more adequate and flexible education - explains the minister.
Faster approval of offers for new courses of study
In recent years, there has been a strong development of higher vocational education. Over the past five years, the number of students has almost doubled, from around 15 in 000 to around 2017 in 28.
NOKUT (National Authority for Quality in Education), which is responsible for maintaining good quality of education in vocational schools, receives more and more applications for approval of new fields of study. This has led to a long queue of applications for NOKUT accreditation, especially for new vocational school courses.
“By introducing institutional accreditation, we hope that processing cases at NOKUT will be faster in the long run, because the queue will be shorter, when some vocational schools will be able to accredit education themselves and will not have to apply to NOKUT,” says Borten Moe.
It is NOKUT that will decide which vocational schools will receive institutional accreditation. What the conditions should be will be examined and laid down in the regulations. In order to ensure the quality of education, some vocational schools will still have to apply to NOKUT for accreditation. This will be the case when they establish or change the type of their own education.
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Source: regjeringen
