All politicians agree that young people outside education and working life are a major challenge for Norway. Why then do they practically separate young people before they have even started? For me, it is a mystery that the Norwegian school has not understood that many handle written exams well, while others need other ways to measure their knowledge. More use of oral exams could have given many young people a pass and made them ready for Norwegian working life. I challenge Kari Nessa Nordtun to clarify why she and her ministry have such a fixed view of exams. The curriculum prevents practitioners from being allowed to take the exam orally. In the curriculum it says; “Before the subject test, everyone who has not followed a normal course of training must have passed a written exam based on the curriculum in the subject”. I travel throughout Norway and advertise that young people who do not feel at home behind a desk with a PC should come to us. They can either do this through the construction engineering vocational course or as apprentices in a longer course in a company where you end up with a certificate. We have very good experience in taking in young people who are on the outside; They don’t go to school and they don’t have a job. Many of them struggle with psychological difficulties. Who wouldn’t have done it if, for 10 years at school, every day, they have felt that yet another day has shown them that they are not good enough because they are only measured on theory and the ability to sit concentrated behind a desk. Many of them have the common feature that they are very good practitioners, with lots of energy. Fortunately, we have industries like mine. With us, practical skills are more important than theoretical ones, and restlessness in the body (ADHD or not) is a valuable characteristic. When we get them out on an apprenticeship in a company, they often turn out to be good practitioners. After a short time, they find that they go home every day with a little more sense of mastery. With a sense of mastery also comes self-respect and self-esteem. They learn to carry out tasks, they work in a team and they get adults around them who recognize them for what they can do. Our training offices, which follow these apprentices, have a goal that these young people will end up with a vocational certificate. The qualification is the gateway to a permanent and secure job. With a permanent job comes the opportunity to get a mortgage and an independent life. When the apprentice is registered for the vocational test, it is because the training consultant and the company agree that the apprentice now knows what he needs to be able to pass the vocational test. This means that they can carry out the tasks required, and they have reached the learning objectives they are supposed to. The apprentice can do this in practice because we operate in a practical profession. The apprentice has not had instruction in writing either on a computer or with pen and paper. After all, it was precisely the allergy to theory that initially caused the apprentice to end up in precisely this longer apprenticeship. It is disappointing then that the curriculum does not accept that the theory, which must be tested and passed before one goes up to the subject test, cannot be tested orally by an examiner. There is a requirement that this test must be done on a PC. We therefore stand with a young person who, through 4 years of apprenticeship, has acquired all the skills needed to get a permanent job with a professional certificate in hand, but is hindered by the fact that the test cannot be taken orally. At a time when we know that one of Norway’s biggest challenges is a demographic tsunami where by 2060 we will have far too few in our workforce, we prevent practitioners from being able to take exams in a way that can give them an opportunity to show what they can. The problem lies in the curriculum, which states “Before the subject test, everyone who has not followed a normal course of training must have passed a written exam based on the curriculum in the subject”. This sentence does not allow us to replace the written exam with an oral one. It hurts extra because it is especially those candidates who have not followed the normal school course who most often need an oral exam to pass. They know the subject, but they cannot demonstrate it in writing. We experience time and time again that young people who have given up on the school system, and perhaps many other parts of society, after a period at our facilities both find mastery, are filled with self-respect and become very important resources in the company. They are too important for the directorate’s rules on written tests to put an end to them and us. Send us your opinion Want to write? Feel free to contact us at news Ytring with your post. The guidelines can be found here. Published 02.10.2024, at 15.07
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Practitioners are forced into outsiders – Expression
