The Norwegian Education Mirror 2022

Smaller pupil cohorts in upper secondary schools

In the 2021-2022 school year, over 186,000 pupils were attending upper secondary school. This is 3 per cent less, or 5,000 fewer pupils, than in the peak year 2016-2017. This is because the number of 16–18-year-olds has fallen by 3 per cent in the same period. The number of young people starting upper secondary school education in the same year that they finished primary and lower secondary school has been stable at 98 per cent in recent years. Level Vg1 has the most pupils, and Level Vg3 has the fewest. This is connected to the fact that vocational pupils normally start their apprenticeship after Level Vg2.

More private upper secondary schools

For the 2021–2022 school year, there were a total of 420 upper secondary schools; 320 public and 100 private.

In the past 10 years, 26 public schools have closed. 14 private upper secondary schools have been founded in that same period. Viken county had the most private schools in the 2021–2022 school year with 22. Three years ago, that figure was 18. Over half of private upper secondary school are approved on the basis of life philosophy or top-level sports.

Public upper secondary schools are significantly larger than private schools; there are on average 530 versus 166 pupils per school. In general, private schools are smaller schools which provide fewer education programmes than public schools. In general study programmes, it is primarily Specialisation in General Studies and Supplementary Studies that are offered by private schools. Less than half of private schools offer vocational training. Healthcare, Child and Youth Development, Building and Construction and Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry are the vocational training programmes that are offered by the most private schools. Only 9 per cent of pupils go to private upper secondary schools. The proportion of pupils at private upper secondary schools has increased by nearly 2 percentage points in the last 10 years.