There is inequality in reading skills among school students in Norway than in 19 other OECD countries, a research report from UNICEF shows.
Countries such as Latvia, Spain and Finland make it by easier.
This is reflected in UNICEF’s research report An Unfair Start: Inequality in Children’s Education in Rich Countries. It ranks 41 member states of the EU and OECD in terms of degree of inequality in kindergartens, primary and secondary schools. The purpose is to investigate the relationship between child performance and factors such as parents’ occupation, immigrant background, sex and school characteristics.
The report concludes that there is no correlation between how rich a country is within the OECD area and their place in rankings when looking at inequality.
The disparity in reading skills in Norway increases with the age of the students. The research report shows that Norway falls from 7th place in reading skills at primary school level to 20th place last year at the youth school level. Girls have better results on reading tests than boys in all countries. In Norway, however, there is a greater gap in literacy between boys and girls than in many other countries. Norway is in the 24th place and is beaten by Sweden, Denmark and Poland.
There is also a large difference between the literacy skills of the majority of the population and first generation immigrants, but the difference between the groups is far less in Norway than in many other OECD countries.
© NTB scanpix / #Norway Today
