Norway’s first private vocational school opens in Bergen

Female Industrial worker, photo: Pixabay

The country’s first private vocational school will probably open in Bergen next autumn, reports NRK.

The Ministry of Education has approved that entrepreneurs in Western Norway can start a vocational school in Bergen, writes NRK.

 

 

The school will have up to 60 students at each in VG1 ‘building and engineering’ and VG2 ‘construction technologies’. It will be centrally located in Bergen. The Association of Entrepreneurs ‘Bygg og Anlegg’ (EBA) in Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane, who are behind the project, hope that the doors can open next school year.

Huge demand

Minister for Education, Torbjørn Røe Isaksen (Conservatives), believes that the need for vocational schools is huge.

– If too few choose vocational subjects and completes the study, 90,000 skilled workers will be sorely missed in 2030, according to Isaksen.

He believes there will be more private vocational schools in the future.

– This is because the need is so big and we want more vocational schools as a supplement to the public offer.

– But, of course, we assume that we do not return to the old law that stated that such schools were prohibited, says Røe Isaksen in a remark to the channel.

Chairwoman of education and health in Hordaland County, Emil Gadolin (Labour), is highly critical of the decision and believes this is ‘a pure ideological struggle from the right.’

– They want more private schools at the expense of the public. I am scared by this development, says Gadolin in a comment on NTB.

– Ideological track

He points out both that the Directorate of Education rejected the application of the private school because it would have negative consequences for the public schools, and that in the consultation process – both Hordaland County and the construction industry as a whole – were clearly negative to the application.

– This the Minister elects to disregard, he overruns his own professionals and rather runs an ideological race. There is no doubt that such a private school will jeopardize public investment into construction, Gadolin states.

 

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today