Summer is almost over, and 75,000 young people are getting ready for the first day of upper secondary school. There is excitement, there is anticipation, it is the start of a journey into adulthood. At the same time, thousands of peers sit without debutant nerves or expectations. They stand outside. Like everyone else, they have the right to a place in upper secondary school, but will not be able to do three more years of theory-heavy teaching. They lost their self-confidence day by day and year by year in primary school. There is nothing wrong with their heads, but they are struggling to adapt to a traditional school life in Norway. In the long run, they are labor that, in the worst case, will never be useful. They risk being permanently on the bench. Almost one in ten young people between the ages of 20 and 24 is not in work, education or other training. 2 percent of young people under the age of 18 are in the same situation. We in the construction industry need thousands of these young people, but Norwegian society is unable to create a race that gets them out into working life equipped with vocational certificates and formal competence. What causes this? Some of the answer can be found in Sintef’s evaluation of employment verification allowance from 2015. It is pointed out that young people who receive employment verification allowance often have a diffuse or complex problem which is difficult to diagnose. Often they still get a mental diagnosis. Such diagnoses are often about social problems, low self-esteem and poor self-esteem. I meet many of these young people out in local communities. They describe a childhood and adolescence where they went to school every day and came home with less sense of mastery and self-confidence than when they left home in the morning. When your head has a hard time with theory, and the letters get mixed up, it usually shows in the grades. These young people are often good practitioners, precisely because we humans often become good at what we enjoy doing. In our sector, since 2011 we have had requirements in public contracts for apprentices. This has meant that the demand for apprentices has been high, and you have almost been guaranteed an apprenticeship if you have studied civil engineering. It may seem that we have succeeded in promoting vocational subjects, because more and more people are now applying for these studies. That is good news, but the problem is that the number of study places has not increased accordingly. This has led to the grade requirement for entry becoming higher. For example, this year you had to have an average of 3.93 to enter building and construction engineering at Odda Vgs. For a young person who is more practical than theoretical, this is high. And for a theoretically weak young person who only dreams of driving large machines, it may not be an option to accept study specialization or tourism studies. What then happens to the young people who we really need in our industry – the practitioners – when they don’t come in? There are many stories out there about young people who stay at home when their friends start high school. Parents gradually see their child getting less spark of life in tandem with less self-esteem. Having a goal with what you do every day, an environment to go to and not least experiencing mastery is essential to having a good life. I think most people can agree on that. The most beautiful moments I have had in my working life are when some of the young people in these statistics have been taken on as apprentices because parents or others have known the contractors. It is often difficult to bring in a young employee who has lacked a sense of mastery at school all his life. But we have many examples of precisely these young people – when they get to work practically and experience enough mastery and motivation to take a vocational certificate – become our best and most loyal employees. The most important thing, however, is what it means for this young person’s life. We also hear it from parents: “The happiest day of our lives was when the boy took his vocational exam. Finally we had proof that he is not stupid, but that his head just works a little differently,’ a mother told me after a visit to a contractor. One of Norway’s biggest challenges is the number of young people outside the workforce. We have parts of the solution, but it requires the authorities to make arrangements for young people who will not be able to complete study specialization to come to us. Norway cannot afford for these young people to fall outside the workforce. The Minister of Education must provide more school places for civil engineering so that those with less strong character get a place. The Minister of Labor and Inclusion must get NAV to work more closely and more systematically with the business world, so that those who are not suitable for vocational training – because it has also become theory-heavy – are caught and given a qualification course that is adapted to him or her. Each individual contractor cannot sit and study NAV’s many measures to see where they can possibly get support to take on this task. In our industry, many of these young people may be exactly the workers who will receive a medal for long and faithful service in 25 years’ time. But we need help getting them in!
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Those that Norway does not benefit from – Speech
