Abridged version
Translation from Norwegian

Background and challenges

Submitted to the Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs on
1 October 1997

Our time is characterised by rapid, wide-ranging changes at the workplace and in society. Many employees are finding that these developments are making new demands on their knowledge and competence. Education and competence are of considerable importance to the distribution of income, for equality and for influence in society. Private and public enterprises must have a competent work force if they are to meet tomorrow's challenges. In a welfare society, it is important that as many people as possible are employed. This requires a competent and flexible labour force.

The curriculum for the primary and lower secondary school, upper secondary education and adult education emphasises that "the educational system must be built in such a way that adults can be given the same opportunities as the young people of today. A basic education will no longer be sufficient for the lifelong practice of a job. Readjustment and the subsequent renewal of knowledge will be the stable ingredient of life. The knowledge adults have acquired through basic education must thus be maintained and renewed. The educational system must be open, making it possible to resume an education at any time of life and from any trade or profession, without meeting major, formal obstacles."

The Committee's proposal supports this important objective.

The comprehensive development of the public education system during recent decades has given an increasing number of young people the possibility of an education. From 1970 until 1996, the percentage of 18-year-olds receiving an education has almost doubled and today most young people attend upper secondary education. This development means that the older part of the labour force generally has a far shorter formal education than the younger part. The diagram illustrates these differences between the age groups.

Education is not only acquired through the public education system. The workplace is the most important source of new knowledge for adults. It is therefore essential that a reform of adult education and continuing education and training will enable adults to acquire new competence based on the knowledge they already have and that the knowledge thus acquired will be recognised and documented.

One important aspect of the reform is to establish a closer collaboration between the educational system and the workplace. The dividing lines between education and work must be reduced. The reform aims for broad, differentiated opportunities for adult education and continuing education and training provided by both public and private institutions and organisations. These opportunities must be adapted to meet the needs of the workplace and the users.

The Committee believes that these concrete proposals can be implemented within a relatively short period of time.

Most of the proposals are directed at the whole population and are unrelated to the labour market.

The Committee proposes:

1. Assessment and recognition of non-formal learning

Systems should be established whereby non-formal learning can be documented for use in the educational system and working life.

Such documentation can contain information about work tasks, form of work and training, both in-house and external courses, conferences, continuing education and training, and so on. Documentation of this kind will be of great importance when applying for jobs, and it will be easier and quicker to complete an education if a person can start from his or her actual level of competence.

The employees' and employers' organisations and the educational sector must work together to develop and test documentation schemes, in order to establish a recognised system linked up with the public educational system. This work should be defined as a separate project for which special funds are allocated.

The county authorities should use an advisory board in the process of assessing non-formal learning in upper secondary education.

The boards will be given the responsibility of clarifying individual qualifications, both formal and non-formal. On this basis, the person in question can complete upper secondary education. The boards can also evaluate whether an adult is qualified for admission to university or college.

The county authorities should continue to have the responsibility of assessing individual competence in upper secondary education, including apprenticeship training. The county authorities should also be given the responsibility of establishing and managing the boards. Relevant operators should be represented on the executive committees of the boards. The national educational authorities should finance the boards and draw up joint guidelines for their work. In the interests of the individual, it must be possible to appeal the decisions made by the county authorities.

An advisory body should be set up at national level to evaluate non-formal learning in higher education.

This body can also be given the responsibility of approving education from Norwegian and foreign institutions in relation to the Norwegian degree system. Individual institutions should still be able to approve individual examinations taken at foreign institutions as equivalent to studies at Norwegian institutions. It must be possible to appeal the decisions.

All adults who need basic education must be given the opportunity to obtain this.

Some adults lack a formal basic education or significant skills in some of the subjects taught in the primary and lower secondary school, such as writing, reading and arithmetic. The municipal authorities are responsible for providing primary and lower secondary education. This also applies to adults. A statutory obligation must be imposed on the municipal authorities to ensure that all adults who need primary and/or lower secondary education are given this opportunity and it must be their special responsibility to provide flexible systems for this group.

All adults must be given the opportunity to receive upper secondary education.

Under Reform 94, all young people today have the right to three years of upper secondary education. There is a large group of adults who have not received upper secondary education. A statutory obligation must be imposed on the county authorities to ensure that all adults are given the opportunity to obtain an upper secondary education. In the first instance, this will apply to adults who are not covered by Reform 94.

The education provided must be based on both the formal and the non-formal qualifications of the applicant and be adapted to suit the individual1s situation as regards when, where and how tuition is organised.

Adults with a special need for individually adapted training should, on the evaluation of an expert, be entitled to such training.

The new upper secondary education opportunities for adults should be introduced gradually and in such a way that needs can be met over a ten-year period. The present system whereby adults are able to acquire a craft or trade certificate in compliance with Section 20 of the Act relating to Apprenticeship Training in Working Life, should be retained throughout this period.

Adults can be accepted at the level of upper secondary education corresponding to their total qualifications (formal and non-formal).

This means that adults who do not fulfil the formal requirements for acceptance into upper secondary education can nonetheless be accepted on the basis of proven, equivalent competence.

Studies defined by universities and colleges as continuing education and training must be open for everyone.

This type of education should also be applicable within the degree system in higher education and ordinary certificates must be issued after the final examinations. Continuing education and training courses are often of shorter duration than ordinary studies and in many cases it is the employer who pays the course fees. The Committee is of the opinion that these courses should be made available to as many people as possible.

Adults who do not have the stipulated qualifications can be accepted for higher education on the basis of proven, equivalent competence.

Proven competence can also give the possibility of shorter studies. Persons with an untraditional education and working background or persons with long practice in a profession or vocation may be sufficiently qualified for higher education. It should be possible for them to be accepted for ordinary studies without formal competence. They should be able to be accepted for ordinary studies, if they have been found to be qualified through an individual evaluation.

The Committee assumes that this possibility of admission will not apply to very many people and that a national body should give advice on whether these applicants are qualified for higher education.

Systems with relevance to external candidates in higher education should be retained and further developed.

The right to study leave must be established by law in order to ensure equal treatment.

The Committee believes that these rights must be established by law in order to ensure equal treatment of all employees and employers. The law must contain provisions regarding educational purposes. Furthermore, limitations must be put on the use of the rights in order to safeguard the employer's possibility of planning production and organising personnel. More detailed rules should be agreed upon between the employees' and employers' organisations.

4. Funding

The Government will cover the costs of primary and lower secondary education and upper secondary education for adults.

The Committee believes that this is necessary in order to achieve sufficient variety and flexibility in the opportunities provided. The individual adult will thus have the costs of his/her education covered, while the municipal authorities, county authorities and other educational organisers will have the costs of providing the education covered. Funding arrangements must be based on contribution and activity.

The Committee presumes that the employees' and employers' organisations will give priority to schemes that enable all employees to take part in continuing education and training for adults. Funds must be set aside for continuing education and training through collective agreements.

Today's basic agreements and collective agreements contain stipulations that continuing education and training which enterprises need are the enterprises' responsibility.

In order to ensure that as many people as possible are given the opportunity of continuing education and training, the employers' and employees' organisations should give increasing priority in wage settlements and collective agreements to competence-promoting measures and compensation schemes. The agreement system has the advantage that it is flexible and can be adapted to the needs of the different areas covered by the agreements. It will also be possible to favour special groups.

The rules governing the State Educational Loan Fund should be reviewed so they can be better adapted to people doing continuing education and training courses.

The Committee believes that financial assistance from the State Educational Loan Fund can be used more actively in continuing education and training in general. Since the rules apply primarily to young, first-time students, loans and grants may be insufficient for older applicants. It will be particularly relevant to evaluate family allowances and the rule that financial assistance from the Loan Fund is reduced if the borrower receives financial contributions from other sources.

The tax rules should be reviewed to ensure that no distinction is made between different types of education.

The Committee believes that the tax rules should not put unnecessary obstacles in the way of continuing education and training and that the rules should be as simple, reasonable and predictable as possible.

Under today's tax rules, the updating of education and continuing education are treated differently. If an employee pays the costs of education him/herself, the cost of updating is tax deductible, whereas the cost of continuing education is not. There are also differences in the way basic and continuing education are treated for tax purposes. If an employer pays the costs of the education, the employee is taxed on the benefit if it is basic education, but not if it is continuing education. The present guidelines are difficult to practise because the educational categories overlap. This also opens the possibility of different treatment from one tax district to another.

A special funding scheme should be introduced to stimulate the development of new user-adapted educational opportunities, teaching methods in adult education and motivation activities.

The intention of this scheme is to give financial support to the development of products, programmes and processes, so that this type of activity can gradually become an integrated activity within education. An application for a development contract can be submitted by the users (enterprises, companies, networks, organisations, branches of industry, individuals, etc.) or by the suppliers of education (universities, colleges, resource centres, non-government organisations, distance education institutions, etc.). Contact should be established between the supplier and the user of education before applying for the funding of a development contract.

The Committee believes that funds must also be set aside for research.

A comprehensive development programme should be established for the use of information technology in teaching and learning.

Information and communications technology open up new possibilities in adult education. The development programme should therefore include the use of network-based and interactive media in adult education, competence building in media education and adult education and the development of new educational opportunities. Investment in information technology in teaching and learning must apply to all levels of education.

An assistance scheme should be established to support systematic programmes for the development of human resources in enterprises.

The Committee believes that financial assistance for the development of human resources should be a significant part of the activities of the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund (SND). To qualify for assistance, the measures must be in the nature of investments that are made as part of the enterprise's competence-building strategy. The enterprises must contribute the greater part themselves. The assistance can, for example, be directed at small companies in great need of reorganisation.

The boards of the individual educational institutions will be given the authority to decide whether or not to initiate continuing education courses rating twenty credits or less.

The authority invested in the board will apply to courses under the direction of the institution and in the fields in which the institution has competence. Guidelines will have to be drawn up defining the required qualifications to ensure that courses of study fall within the scope of the educational institution's competence.

Universities and colleges must be given the chance to collect a user fee for continuing education and training.

The rule that a course of study must rate ten credits or less before a user fee can be charged, must be abolished in the case of continuing education and training at state-run institutions of higher education. The Committee is of the opinion that the criterion for whether a user fee can be charged should be the target group and not a relatively arbitrary number of credits. Institutions must be given the possibility of charging a user fee when basic study programmes are offered to external groups of students and organised as flexible learning. The general principle must still be that basic study programmes are free.

7. Better information about education

Information about education should be compiled and made easily accessible to everyone who applies for education. One body should be given the responsibility of making the necessary arrangements.

There is no complete list today of continuing education and training opportunities and no one person or body is responsible for giving guidance or keeping informed about all the activity. There are, however, a number of databases containing information about education that can be developed. To ensure that a continuing education and training reform will embrace as many people as possible, it is essential that correct, objectives-oriented and updated information about educational opportunities and facilities is available in a properly adapted form.

The Committee proposes that a new organisational unit be established - a Development Secretariat for continuing education and training. The unit should be placed outside the jurisdiction of the ministries.

The tasks of the Development Secretariat will be:

• to initiate and/or participate in the funding of development projects that can lead to new and better teaching methods, evaluation and documentation methods, and adult education opportunities
• to develop and manage projects that can lead to a better infrastructure for the use of information and telecommunications technology in adult education and the development of human resources
• to ensure that good information systems are established and made accessible to the different target groups in an effective manner.

The Development Secretariat must have an executive committee which is free to choose its own form of organisation and management. The new scheme for funding development contracts should be the responsibility of this Secretariat.

Financial consequences for the State

The Committee estimates that the costs to the State of implementing the reform will be between NOK 1.2 and 1.8 billion per year.

The Committee is of the opinion that the way the reform is planned will make it possible to reap major socio-economic benefits to the advantage of working life in Norway. The financial consequences for the State will depend on budget policy priorities in the years to come. Any calculation of the costs of the proposed public grants for basic education and upper secondary education for adults will be very uncertain, particularly as it is difficult to predict how many adults will be interested in such training.

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October 1997

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