Are private schools a solution for students who refuse to go to public school?
The number of Norwegian pupils who refuse to go to school is increasing. New research shows that school refusal may be linked to educational policy guidelines and the way the Norwegian school system is organized.
Norway’s educational policy says school pupils have the right to a good, safe school environment, which should foster a sense of mastery in various subject areas.
The Norwegian school system’s opportunities to be socially and academically inclusive have been limited over the past 20 years. This has led many families who have children who refuse to go to school to seek solutions in private schools, as they operate under different framework conditions.
Unsuccessful policy
NTNU researchers say the reason for this is an unsuccessful educational policy. Its aim was to provide the state school system with flexible frameworks and more freedom.
The number of pupils permitted in each class and the opportunities teachers have to provide adapted learning for individual pupils are determined by the framework conditions for schools.
These framework conditions also provide guidelines regarding the quality of teachers’ presence in the classroom, meaning their engagement, attention, recognition, and respect in relation to pupils.
NTNU’s Ingvil Bjordal and her colleague Mette Nygård have investigated whether school refusal may be a consequence of educational policy guidelines.
In addition, they highlight how schools are pressured into violating several sections of the Education Act.
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30 families involved
“The Norwegian school system is rooted in a strong sense of community and has inclusion as one of its main objectives. Our study shows that the way schools are governed and financed limits the opportunities to meet these objectives,” Bjordal said.
The researchers have spoken to 30 families who have chosen to take their child out of the state school system in favour of a private school.
The study looks at how changing schools is linked to the perception that the state school system as an unsafe and difficult environment, to the extent that some pupils started refusing to go to school.
Six private schools with different orientations are represented in the study, and interviews were conducted from 2020 to 2022.
What happened to the Norwegian school system?
Over the past 20 years, educational policy guidelines have been introduced that have changed key areas of the state school system.
The goal was for schools to have increased freedom of choice and be organized in ways that could provide greater flexibility and economic efficiency.
2006 saw the introduction of the Knowledge Promotion reform and a new national curriculum. Focus was placed on basic skills, quantitative learning objectives and increased reporting duties.
“A lot of research has been done on different aspects of this development. Among other things, studies have looked at how a more goal-oriented curriculum and testing of pupils’ competence in specific subjects have contributed to a narrowing of the curriculum and created more bureaucracy,” Bjordal said.
The research by Bjordal and Nygård highlights how the development of school refusal must be seen in light of the educational policy framework conditions. There is a correlation between the two because the values, attitudes, and patterns of action in educational policy influence teachers’ autonomy.
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Measuring school quality on the basis of a handful of subjects
The Knowledge Promotion reform introduced new guidelines on how state schools should be governed and which competencies should be prioritized. Subjects and activities that were not to be measured received less focus.
“Research shows that a stronger emphasis on pupils’ learning outcomes in certain ‘core subjects’ has contributed to a narrowing of the curriculum. This is not necessarily because teachers want it that way, but because they, the pupils, and school quality are measured and assessed on the basis of a handful of subject areas,” Bjordal said.
In addition, the framework for the ‘class’ as an organisational unit was changed a few years before the reform, where regulations regarding national maximum permissible class size were abolished. This meant that pupils could be organised into larger and more variable groups.
“According to the Education Act, the most important function of a class is to ensure social belonging, and our study shows that regulating class size is particularly important for pupils’ sense of security and belonging in school,” says Bjordal.
At the same time, the regulation of private schools has been liberalised over the past 20 years, leading to a greater number of private schools and a more diverse provision of education.
Private school as a solution
The Education Act stipulates that pupils are entitled to a good, safe school environment, which should be ensured through the way pupils are organized. In addition, the Education Act states that schools are required to take measures if a pupil feels unsafe at school.
The researchers presented three stories from their data on school refusal. These stories illustrate how school refusal can manifest itself and identify patterns in the large volume of data.

The school reforms of the last 20 years have aimed to make the school more flexible and less demanding on resources. Research suggests that the reforms may create alienation for some of the students. Photo: Shutterstock
‘Jonas’’ parents told the researchers that he was doing well socially. He had no diagnoses or needs for special education or adaptations. His school refusal was linked to a low adult-to-child ratio. However, the school’s response was to refer ‘Jonas’ for a specialist assessment.
In meetings with external support services, the parents were presented with the option of moving Jonas to a private school as a good option. This was based on the support services’ experience that previous pupils had fared better at the private school in question. Private schools operate under different framework conditions and provide teachers and school management with different working conditions.
Jonas’s mother says:
The difference between state school and private school is the number of pupils. There are 19 pupils in the year group at the private school, whereas the public school had 60. It is therefore easy for children to be overlooked because the teachers can’t attend to all of them and don’t see every child every day. In addition, they had removed the extra child and youth workers in the class, resulting in even fewer adults.
The parents said that it was the framework conditions under which the teachers had to work that were the problem with the state school.
Bjordal says that Jonas’s story shows how factors such as low teacher staffing and organizational conditions at schools impact pupils who do not actually have special needs.
A school with a narrow academic focus makes it easier for pupils to ‘fail’ and become a problem.
“For some of these pupils, moving to a private school with smaller class sizes, more staff stability, a broader academic focus and the opportunity to receive adapted teaching and special needs education has been crucial in getting the children back to school,” she said.
“When external support services recommend switching to a private school due to issues with class size and teacher–pupil ratios, it can be interpreted as a recognition that state schools are unable to ensure the sense of safety and security that pupils are entitled to pursuant to the Education Act,” she said.
Excessive bureaucracy
Another recurring theme among the parents was that their meetings with school were characterized by standardized requirements, and that their conversations with teachers were characterized by a lack of time.
Despite this, the Education Act states that schools must be organized so that all children’s needs are met, regardless of their background, abilities and circumstances. This means that pupils with special needs should receive the necessary support in state schools.
Another informant, ‘Sander’s’ mother, says:
He was so stressed and so scared of school. Every day he said, well not every day, but he said that he didn’t want to live anymore, that he didn’t want to go to school anymore. He had real problems, so we had to take things easy. He’d simply had enough. And the [new] teachers say that he is about 3 years behind where he should be when it comes to comprehension, but it will quickly improve […] He has seen a huge development at [private school] since he started there, in being engaged, having a positive attitude towards school and [academic] outcomes.
Bjordal explains that the parents highlight how the children fall victim to the educational policy frameworks that set constraints for state schools.
Among other things, this happens through the organization of pupils into large, variable classes, a lack of time to follow-up individual pupils, and a lack of resources with which to prioritize work on the social environment and to offer statutory provisions such as special needs education.
Unstable groups
The Education Act states that classes, basic groups and groups must not be larger than is justifiable in relation to pedagogy and security.
‘Nora’ came from a large lower secondary school, and her refusal to go to school was linked to negative experiences in the social environment. The school had organized the pupils into groups that were frequently rearranged. This led to instability and the pupils spent a lot of time and energy trying to find their place among their new fellow pupils. In addition, the group of teaching staff was unstable.
‘Nora’s’ father said that the school did not address these matters and had failed to build a positive social environment.
The groups were rearranged a lot. So there was a lot of going back to square one and redrawing the classroom seating plan, which caused a lot of instability. […] The form teachers have gone grey and pulled out what little hair they had left because they never achieved stability in those groups…
Much like the stories told by the parents of Jonas and Sander, Nora’s father pointed out that it was the school’s framework conditions and the teachers’ working conditions that contributed to Nora’s experiences, and that they eventually chose to switch to a private school.
“Based on our research, it is clear that being able to create stable frameworks for the children is important. Adequate resources, high teacher–pupil ratios, predictability and smaller classes are crucial for schools to be socially and academically inclusive,” says Bjordal.
At Nora’s new school, the conditions were better, there was a stable group of teaching staff, and the teachers actively worked with and participated in the pupils’ social environment.
Practical and aesthetic subjects
The study shows that the reforms introduced over the past 20 years, which aimed to make schools more flexible and less resource-intensive, do not align well with the school framework conditions of being socially and academically inclusive.
Large classes and flexible organization lead to many pupils experiencing school as unstable and unsafe.
“A safe learning environment requires that pupils have the opportunity to gain a sense of mastery in multiple arenas and subjects. Among other things, this can be achieved by giving the different subjects an equal standing and ensuring practical and aesthetic subjects receive a more prominent place in the curriculum. In addition, resources and time must be made available to practice a more holistic pedagogy that takes into account children’s different circumstances and the diversity of pupils in school,” says Bjordal.
The researcher emphasizes that the educational policy implemented over the past 20 years may appear to have led to a ‘flight’ from state schools, where alternative private schools seem to be the ‘solution’ to a state school system whose quality is diminishing.
Reference: Nygård, M. & Bjordal, I. (2024). Skolevegring og “flukt” fra den offentlig skolen (School refusal and ‘flight’ from state schools). Norwegian Journal of Sociology. vol. 8(2-3).