Early educational provision – emphasised in education policy reforms in Norway? An analysis of education policy documents

Abstract

The article analyses how the intentions of early provision in Norwegian schools have been expressed in the education policy reforms in Norway from the 1970s to the present day. The first area deals with the intentions that most explicitly cover early provision; prevention, early detection and intervention. The second area of analysis relates to the early provision intentions with an emphasis on the correlation between individual and environmental factors seen in light of differentiation and disability. The third area examines how significance is attached to pupils’ social background with regard to early provision in learning in schools. Finally, consideration is given to the relationship between early provision intentions and efforts to prevent pupils dropping out of upper secondary education. The analysis also shows that the policy guidelines on early provision for schools and teachers have been weak and unclear. This is due to the fact that the early provision intentions have primarily been expressed in reports to the Storting, and rarely given any kind of focus in national curricula.