Document 3:17 (2024−2025) / Published 20.08.2025 Teaching aids in primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary schools

Overall assessment

It is unsatisfactory that pupils and teachers lack teaching aids in schools.

School owners are not purchasing teaching aids and equipment that meet the needs of the schools. The consequence of this is that pupils experience unequal learning conditions and teachers spend an unnecessary amount of time compensating for the lack of teaching aids.

The Ministry of Education and Research is not ensuring the production of teaching aids that meet the needs of all pupils in all subjects. This applies in particular to adapted teaching aids for pupils in several vocational subjects and subjects with low enrolment nationwide.

Conclusions

• There is a shortage of teaching aids in schools, and the shortage is most pronounced in primary and lower secondary schools.
• Pupils with special needs for adaptation do not have sufficient access to differentiated teaching aids.
• School owners do not receive sufficient support to adequately assess privacy, information security, and universal design.
• There is inadequate provision for sound pedagogical use of digital teaching aids.
• Funding for teaching aids is not sufficiently adapted to the needs of schools.

Recommendations

We recommend that the Ministry of Education and Research:

• address the shortage of teaching aids and the considerable differences in pupils’ and teachers’ access, and assess whether there is a need for further measures on the part of the central government;
• implement measures that improve access to teaching aids in vocational subjects and subjects with low enrolment;
• implement measures that ensure adapted teaching aids for pupils who need them;
• continue the work on national support for school owners’ assessments of whether teaching aids fulfil requirements for privacy, information security, and universal design; and
• facilitate enhanced knowledge about the use of print and digital teaching aids in schools and how the use of teaching aids affects pupils' learning

We also recommend that the Ministry implement measures to ensure that the central government can better communicate

• guidance materials;
• competence-promoting measures; and
• research on the use of teaching aids for teachers and schools.