Elections (skolevalg) were held in Norwegian schools once again. The system for organizing school elections has been in place since 1989. Since then, school elections are held every two years in conjunction with regular elections.
Skolevalg are part of democracy education in Norwegian schools. School elections, school debates and polling places should give students the experience of being an active citizen in a democracy. Students must practice critical thinking skills, learn to deal with differences of opinion, and learn to respect differences of opinion.
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This is an important element of education
- School elections are an important part of educating students about democracy at school. Thanks to school elections, students have the opportunity to take part in political discussions, learn about political trends and cast their own votes. This is more important than the result itself, says branch director Bjørn Lescher-Nuland at the Directorate of Education.
391 schools registered for this year's school elections. Almost 140 students voted, and the turnout was 000%.
– I am glad that so many schools use school elections as an arena to increase students' knowledge about democracy. Here they can practice critical thinking skills, learn to deal with differences of opinion and respect differences of opinion, says Lescher-Nuland.
School elections were held in the form of ballot box voting, similar to ordinary elections.
Student choice survey – data on young people's attitudes
After the election, students can take part in a school choice survey. The study provides insight into Norwegian youth's attitudes towards politics and society.
– These are unique data that are made available to everyone in an anonymized form. Schools can therefore use this data themselves in their teaching plans, says branch director Vigdis N. Kvalheim in Sikt.
In this way, students can try their hand at being researchers and compare their own results and answers with other schools. Additionally, they can compare their answers with the results of an election survey covering the entire population.
Here are the 2023 school election results.
FrP is growing from 8,1% in 2019 to 19,5% this year, and therefore has the largest increase of all parties, by 11,4 points. percent
From Høyre's 21,9%, an increase of 8,9 percentage points.
AP retreats by 9,5 percentage points from 26,5% to 17% and is the party that loses the most votes compared to the 2019 school elections.
MDG also sees a large decline, from 10,9% to 3,8%. Rødt also retreats from 5% to 2,7%. The same applies to Sp, which increases from 8,1% to 6,0%.
Venstre also lose some votes, but with a decline of only 0,7 percentage points their percentage is quite stable at 9,4%.
Of the parties whose support increases with Høyre and FrP, SV sees an increase of 1,3 percentage points, from 9,8% to 11,1%. KrF also slightly up, from 2,3% to 2,8%.
How adult voters will vote will be revealed soon, on September 11.
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Source: Sikt
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