Norway: union elects new leadership

At the recent national Congress of Norwegian teacher union Utdanningsforbundet, Education International General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen thanked the union for its extensive development cooperation programme that has “helped strengthen education unions in many low-income countries”.

He also praised the union for playing a leading role in EI in the development and promotion of early childhood education policy.

Held from 2-5 November in the city of Lillehammer, the event was attended by nearly 200 delegates from all over the congress and guests from as far afield as Australia and Zambia.

Addressing the Congress participants on 4 November, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg stressed the importance of a continuing dialogue between his government and the national education union, and that the teaching profession plays a crucial role in the knowledge society. Stoltenberg also announced the development of a new legislation setting a maximum number of students per teacher.

While discussing education quality, Stoltenberg noted that 20% of pupils leaving primary education do not fully master the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. Although the current left-centre government does not favour the privatization of education services, Stoltenberg warned the delegates that preventing private sector initiatives is not just a matter of legislation:

“We must make the public schools better. It is not enough to be proud of what we have achieved in developing a successful public education system in this country, we must welcome critical voices and work hard to improve education quality so that everybody wants to send their children to our public schools.”

On the issue of testing, Stoltenberg stated that he favours national testing provided these would not be standardized tests limiting the freedom of teachers to meet the individual needs of their students.

The day before, the new Education Minister Kristin Halvorsen also addressed the Congress. She underlined the importance of the partnership between unions and the government to improve education quality at all levels.

Apart from having discussed and adopted policies and programmes for the coming three years, the Congress also elected a new leadership. Mimmi Bjerkestad, a pre-school teacher from Bergen succeeded Helga Hjetland as the president of the union. Hjetland led the organization and one of its forerunners for 15 years. Haldis Holst, also current EI vice-president for Europe, was re-elected as the union’s vice-president.

The whole event was streamed live from Lillehammer on Utdanningsforbundet's website: www.udf.no/lm09

To watch the recorded video clips of some highlights of the event, please click on the links below.

Speech by new president Mimmi Bjerkestad