School libraries: Policy development in Norway

Many events now in progress will influence the school library development in Norway in different ways. New national curricula at all levels are developed and will be implemented in august 2006, a new government was elected last fall, and a study of the library sector in general will be presented in June. A survey of the school libraries will also be conducted this year.

The curriculum changes were initiated by the former centre/right minority government and are upheld by the present majority left/centre government with some changes. The great challenge is how to influence the various ongoing processes at the national level to secure and empower the school libraries. It is also important to develop strategies that can be used at the local level to promote the library and the development of information literacy skills in the curriculum planning at that particular school. This is dependent on the attitudes of the school leaders, the cooperation with the teachers as well as the librarians own efforts.

The driving force behind the school reforms are the fact that Norwegian students have not scored very high on various international tests in reading skills, and this worries the politicians. As a result, strong emphasis was put on 5 so-called basic skills; reading, writing, oral communication, arithmetic and the ability to use digital tools by the previous government. The present government kept these skills, but put four of them, reading, writing, oral communication in one paragraph, and added three new skills; competence in English, social competence and learning strategies. Finally, the use of digital skills was changed to digital competence – a somewhat broader concept. In both cases, the strategies employed by school librarians for empowering their libraries has been to point to the library as an important arena for developing these basic skills.

Niels Damgaard, Senior Education Manager in Biblioteksentralen (National Centre for Library Services), and I have developed a course for librarians and teachers in secondary schools (age 16-19). The course lasts one year and consists of 5 one day meetings during the school year. Each participant school has to present a description of their schools, visions for the future, develop plans for their library and do a project in cooperation with the teachers at their school. We invite the principals of the participating schools to the first gathering, and point to the connection between information literacy and the basic skills. Our experience is that the school leaders support our interpretation.

More resources are promised to education by the present government, and hopefully school libraries will also benefit from this. By the way, if you wonder why Norway does not put some of the oil money pouring into the national treasury every day into school libraries - don’t ask me!

Maren Brit Baadshaug