Education in Norway
overview of the education system of Norway
Education in Norway is mandatory for all children aged from 6 to 16. Schools are typically divided into two divisions: primary and lower secondary schooling. The majority of schools in Norway are municipal, where local governments fund and manage administration. Primary and lower secondary schools are available free of charge for all Norwegian citizens as a given right.
When primary and lower secondary education is completed, upper secondary schooling is entitled to students for enrollment, which prepares students for higher education or vocational studies.
The school year in Norway runs from mid-August to late June the following year. The Christmas holiday from mid-December to early January historically divides the Norwegian school year into two terms. Presently, the second term begins in January.
History
Organized education in Norway dates as far back as 2000 B.C. Shortly after Norway became an archdiocese in 1153, cathedral schools were constructed to educate priests in Trondheim, Oslo, Bergen and Hamar.
After the Reformation of Norway in 1537, following the unification with Denmark in 1536, cathedral schools were turned into Latin schools, and it was made mandatory for all market towns to have such a school.
“Education in Norway” enters the record as overview of the education system of Norway. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Education, Norway and overview can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2740462. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2000, 1153, 1537 and 1536.
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This entry incorporates text from “Education in Norway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.