Norwegian compulsory school implements a national curriculum with several educational learning outcomes for each school subject. In 2007 the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training launched a two-year project to investigate the need for national standards in primary and secondary school, this time in four subjects, mathematics, Norwegian, home economics and social studies. The standards were to serve as guidelines to assist teachers and pupils in reaching the national curriculum learning outcomes

After an initial 10 weeks’ pilot study where 8 schools evaluated the project design and handbook produced for teachers, 59 primary and secondary schools and 18 upper secondary schools were selected to participate. One group of schools were to create their own suggestions for national standards, another group trialled standards suggested by the Directorate.

All schools were required to establish links to a higher education institution (e.g. teaching training college) or the equivalent, and were granted substantial resources for their activities. About half of the schools arranged to meet a supervisor from teacher training colleges regularly, and six coordinators from the Norwegian Directorate of Education and Training visited all participating schools and school owners twice during the project. Researchers from the University of Oslo were engaged to follow the project, and one initial and one process report have been published. The project is to end May 1st this year, and the final report as well as the conclusions of the Directorate will be published before September 1st.

My role has been to coordinate the relations between the schools and the higher education institutions as well as supervising the activities of ten of the project schools.
In my presentation I will focus on the Directorate’s understanding of the concept standards, the project design, the process report, the final conclusions and an unanticipated outcome of the project.