 Lifelong
learning in Norway
10 September 2007
If lifelong learning means education and training, the policy concept
dating back to the 1970s risks at becoming as empty as wide. To
understand the meaning of lifelong learning in a Norwegian context,
this report written by Fafo researcher Odd Bjørn Ure (pictured)
looks into the history by searching for practices similar to those
labelled LLL today. The Norwegian breakthrough for lifelong learning
was the ambitious Competence Reform; launched in 1999 but conceived
in the early 1990s amidst claims for paid training leave for employees.
The Competence Reform was also a civil society project. It built
upon a Nordic tradition of folk high schools, high estimation of
learning in the home and in the community as well as parents' control
of schools.
The state-of-play is that Norway has an advanced framework for
lifelong learning. Much of the follow-up work is handed over to
the State. The reform did not entail new institutionalised practices
for collective action in training among social partners. Further
and continuing training is today extensively regulated by law; but
less socially regulated by stakeholders introducing mutual practices
and arrangements. 
Read more and download the report |
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