Regulation in practice The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training Mr Lasse Arntsen May 15th 2017

At this session you will learn about establishing learning arenas for government officials, involving local school leaders and administrators communicating legislation through networks and dialogue rather than traditional one-way information developing dissemination activity and online information more according to the needs of schools

Primary and secondary education in Norway National level: The Ministry of Education and Research The Directorate for education and training County Governors County level: The upper secondary school/high school Local level: Primary school The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training is the executive agency for the Ministry of Education and Research and provides advice and information to the municipalities in accordance with the provisions of the Education Act and the national curricula. This is also done by the County Governors, whose main responsibilities are guidance and supervision. In Norway the more than 400 Municipalities are school owners, responsible for running primary and lower secondary schools, while 17 county authorities have responsibility for upper secondary schools. A common standard is ensured through legislation and the national curricula. Ten years ago, the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training in cooperation with the County Governors began inspecting schools to establish how they were complying with the legislation. We did not find what we had hoped for. The gap between the minimum requirements described in the legislation and what is actually happening in the classroom were too wide. We also learned that the school owners and the school leaders found it difficult to use the information available. They wanted different and better help from the national level. Thus the project “Regulation in Practice” were launched in 2014.

Regulation in practice: Main objective What? Provide better support and guidance to those who have the task of enforcing the rules at the local level Why? For our pupils to obtain an equal and safe education of high quality How? By strengthening our own competence at the national level The approach to goal achievement was to strengthen our own competence at the national level. That meant to enhance the capacities both of those working in the Directorate and of those working at the County Governors. To succeed in this, we all needed to learn more about the daily school life in municipalities. We also needed to make sure that the Directorate and the County Governors appeared unified and gave equal and non-conflicting advices and messages. Thus we did not only need to learn more about “real life” at the local level, but we also needed to learn more about each other at the two different national levels: the Directorate and the County Governors. Collaboration between different horizontal and vertical levels inside the education sector became imperative to reach the objectives in this project. Thus, we decided that all six sub-projects that we established, should consist of employees from both the Directorate and the County Governors. During the project's three-year lifespan (2014-2016) these groups carried out various activities involving more than 1000 employees from national, regional and municipality level.

What was new in this project was that it was not school owners or school leaders, but national "experts" who were the target group for all the activities, and that they jointly tested new methods on how to provide good support and guidance and communicate better regarding legislation and national curricula, such as: establishing professional learning arenas in which bureaucrats from the Directorate and the County Governors met with and involved stakeholders such as school owners, leaders and teachers to learn how the municipalities interpret and apply the legislation (as you can see at this picture).

communicate legislation through networks and dialogue rather than traditional one-way communication. This is a picture from a local newspaper in Northern Norway, telling the great news that their municipalities are taking part in our national project! developing our communication and online information more according to the needs of schools. To succeed in this, we visited schools and spoke to school leaders, teachers and representatives of municipalities and county authorities.

Results Learning from and about each other in the horizontal and vertical cooperation at national level were highly appreciated Involving the users really enhanced our knowledge about real life, and user orientation has got a richer content The project has led to the improvement and lasting changes in how we disseminate regulations

Source: Agency for Public Management and eGovernment, Norway (2017)

Thank You Mr Lasse Arntsen lassers@frisurf.no