The Norwegian Education Mirror 2022
Pupils’ digital skills and competencies
Pupils' digital skills are considered one of the five basic skills in the curriculum. Along with reading, writing, counting and oral skills, digital skills are a prerequisite for learning and development in school, work, and social life.
There are no national surveys which measure digital skills, but in the Student Survey, schools can decide if they want their pupils to answer questions about their digital competence. A number of schools chose to include these questions in 2021, and around 130,000 pupils from Year 5 to Vg3 have answered.
Pupils use digital tools in most subjects
In the Student Survey, 3 out of 4 pupils say that they learn to be critical with the information they find online, and that they learn to think about how they use information from the internet in many, most, or all subjects.
Furthermore, 9 out of 10 pupils say that they use digital tools, e.g. computers, tablets and interactive whiteboards, to learn in all, most or many subjects.
Digital skills
Digital skills refer to being able to obtain and process information, be creative with digital resources and communicate and interact with others in digital environments. Furthermore, they involve being able to use digital resources appropriately and judiciously to solve practical tasks. Digital skills also refer to developing digital judgement by acquiring knowledge and effective strategies for online use. (The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training 2017).
A higher proportion of girls than boys say that they use digital tools to learn it all or most subjects. The different between boys and girls in the use of digital tools is biggest in Year 10, Level Vg1 and Level Vg2, and smallest in Year 5, Year 6 and Level Vg3. However, the boys say more frequently than girls that they use digital tools in many subjects.