Document 3:17 (2025–2026) / Published The Ministry of Education and Research’s efforts to strengthen pupils’ reading, writing and numeracy skills
Despite a long-standing initiative and high priority from the Storting, a very large number of pupils have weak basic skills after completing primary and lower secondary education.
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(PDF, 2.8 MB)
The PDF-report is in Norwegian
Overall assessment
- It is objectionable that Norwegian schools have failed to equip more pupils with good basic skills.
- Weaknesses in the Ministry of Education and Research’s governance increase the risk that municipalities and teachers lack a central government framework for education that effectively contributes to strengthening basic skills. This is objectionable.
Conclusions
- An alarming number of pupils have weak basic skills in reading, writing and numeracy.
- The central government and the municipalities have not succeeded in preventing Norwegian schools from being part of a negative international trend, and pupils’ reading and numeracy skills are weaker in Norway than in comparable countries.
- Although the Ministry of Education and Research has carried out numerous evaluations and has access to a great deal of research, there is a lack of information on the extent to which central government policy instruments have contributed to strengthening basic skills.
- The Ministry of Education and Research has information on weaknesses in the teacher norm and national tests, but has taken few initiatives to improve these.
Recommendations
We recommend that the Ministry of Education and Research strengthen its systematic initiative on basic skills in reading, writing and numeracy by, to a greater extent
- ensuring targeted evaluations and research programmes that, to a greater extent than at present, provide information on the extent to which and how policy instruments are being implemented locally, and on which approaches yield the best results
- ensuring that relevant research-based knowledge on teaching, learning and good practice is disseminated so that this knowledge reaches the classroom
- investigating the effects of changes to central government policy instruments on learning
- improving the central government policy instruments that enable municipalities and teachers to bring about real changes in education, where the Ministry has good information on the weaknesses of these instruments
- conducting more comprehensive and holistic assessments of how the Ministry designs key central government policy instruments, in order to work more systematically towards the most important objectives for the school sector