An ideological battlefield

SV went to the polls on a reform of confidence, but the councilor of the school Inga Marte Thorkildsen is in a crisis of confidence.

Oslo teachers would be on a big strike right now, if the Education Association board hadn’t run them over on Thursday. A miserable salary deal for teachers comes after Dagbladet’s revelations about the many millionaire salaried principals at the Education Agency, expensive consultants and cuts to popular talent investments. This has a terrible symbolic effect for tired teachers, after a very demanding year with partial homeschooling and quarantine.

Several directors have criticized The principal of the school, Marte Gerhardsen, for an unclear management, an entire department of the agency stopped protesting and in January the school board will be questioned in a five-hour hearing at the town hall. Also on Thursday came the annual school contribution indicators, which now say that Oslo is the least contributing country of all counties for students to finish upper secondary school. This year’s national test results also show worse results than before, especially fifth graders and especially in numeracy.

The flowers were brutally plucked

In measurable results, the Oslo school has for many years been far above the rest of the country, and conservatives have used Oslo as a showcase for their school policy. Now the opposition paints such a bleak picture that those of us with children in the Oslo school may fear that our children will receive a poor education.

Fortunately this is not the case, the Oslo school is still doing very well. In national tests, Oslo is ahead of all other counties. At all levels and in all subjects, the capital has the highest proportion of students in the group with the highest academic results and the lowest proportion in the group with the lowest academic results. Elementary school points, high school graduation grades, have risen and are record-breaking. More students complete and pass upper secondary school than before. There is also clear progress in test results in upper secondary school, both in professional subjects and study specialization.

They were going to party and flirt

But this is an ideological fight. Conservative councilors Anniken Hauglie and Torger Ødegaard were more focused on the test results than Inga Marte Thorkildsen and her predecessor Tone Tellevik Dahl of the Labor Party. The new management instructions from the Oslo School still address early intervention in basic skills, but also emphasize other priorities higher than before.

SV has criticized three elements in particular in the Oslo school. First, that contracts held principals accountable for student outcomes, and that this had consequences for salary supplements and career opportunities. Second, tight budgets for many years. And the third, the free choice of schools, which, together with funding related to the number of students, led to a skewed distribution of resources among schools.

The red-green city council has cut the requirements for written assessments, studied alternatives to free choice of schools and dramatically increased budgets at the Oslo school. In recent years, almost 1,000 more teachers have been recruited and the number of health nurses has almost doubled. Free school has been introduced in all districts and free school meals trials have been started.

Big changes create resistanceand it requires wise leadership. Salary increases for directors and so much noise within the agency that entire departments are leaving are not examples of this. But much of the noise would have been made regardless of whether it was Mars Gerhardsen or someone else who replaced Astrid Søgnen.

The former director of the Søgnen school also ended up on edge with the former city councilor. When Søgnen was asked to resign, the directors of her management team formally notified Inga Marte Thorkildsen. It is extremely rare for bureaucrats to use this type of tool against political leadership. A sensational employee survey also showed that Søgnen’s agency was characterized by poor working conditions and elements of a culture of fear.

Now I look forward to homeschooling

A shakeup became the task of Mars Gerhardsen, who replaced Søgne’s large management team. Former directors retain titles and salaries. The pandemic made the process more demanding. It has gone beyond monitoring schools and principals have felt alone at a time when they deserved additional support from the school owner. Here, the school management has taken action. But both Thorkildsen and Gerhardsen have ended up on the defensive, where they end up defending bad cases rather than saying what they want.

The war for the Oslo school continues, and positions largely follow party affiliation. The fact that the audience begins an election year helps to sharpen the fronts. Therefore, there is no reason to believe in peace around the Oslo school in the near future. Serious cases damage the pride of employees at the Oslo school and criticism affects the very history of their own workplace and that of students. The pay party for directors and the impression of foul play erodes motivation And then, as in all wars, it is the children who suffer the most.