Active citizenship in public and nonprofit schools – the case of Norway

ABSTRACT Countries increasingly out-contract public education to private providers to inspire competition and development, but there is limited research on the consequences. This article compares the parents’ room for active citizenship in public and nonprofit compulsory schools in Norway. It analyses a large-scale parental survey by multi-level regressions (OLS) of school-choice, internal empowerment, external participation in governance, and satisfaction with dialogue and collaboration, while controlling for school- and municipality-level factors. Parents’ reasons for choosing free schools are mainly perceived quality, profile, or previous dissatisfaction — not location as in public schools. Although parents are in general satisfied, there is a small but significantly higher level in free schools related to internal empowerment. Thus, stakeholder influence makes a difference, even in a society promoting active citizenship more broadly. The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training conducted the survey in 2018–2019, targeting more than 20,000 parents in 160 public and 25 free schools.