Oslo Free School

A very cold ‘hej’ from Oslo!


After an extremely weird dinner of mashed potatoes and soup preceded by a healthy day of doughnuts, tonnes of tea and chocolate, I thought I’d sit down to tell you about my Norwegian experience. The hostel is really nice, although quite far away from the city centre, and it is literally freezing. It has not snowed (yet) but yesterday everything was frozen when I left the hostel in the morning. Although I have ‘already’ been here more than 48 hours, is seems like the time has flown by. Unfortunately I have to say that that was not just because Oslo is so amazing but also because I had to spend at least half of that time asleep in bed. I already felt quite ill when I left Cambridge on Wednesday but told myself not be a wuss- and here I am now will a full blown flue. At least I had a whole day at the democratic school yesterday and the experience was amazing!

Overall, the Oslo democratic school, or Nyskolen, caters for students age 7 to 16 and has around100 students, divided in two buildings. The lower School has 60 students, split up in three groups: yellow (year 1 and 2), orange (3 and 4) and red (5 to 7). The two younger groups have around 10 kids each while the red group has around 40, however it has three teachers who are all responsible for the group at the same time, so basically the teacher-student ratio is the same. The upper school has 40 students, split up between year 8 to 10. After year 10, Norwegian children go to the ‘Gymnasium’ were they are able to specialise a little bit.

School begins at 8.30am and finishes at 3pm. The days are divided in the morning meeting, four lessons and three breaks including a one hour lunch break. Children are encouraged to go into the nearby park and play but everybody can just do what they like. Lunch is served in the individual classrooms and again children can where, when and how much they want to eat. Food is prepared in the kitchen by a teacher with the help of three students who swap every day. Teachers come from all walks of life: All class teachers are trained either as Waldorf, Montessori or state school teachers, but teaching assistants don’t need qualifications.

A lot of the children have transferred from other schools becausethey were victims of bullying or were unable to deal with the way the schools and/or the system tried to fit them in certain boxes. The school also has special classes for new students to explain to them which opportunities are open to them and how they can influence the everyday life of the school. Many of the students commute up to an hour every day and a lot of them also stay up to two hours after school to spend time with their friends or the teachers who clean up and plan their lessons. Mona explained to me how one important part of the school is the social time the kids can spend together- school here is about community.

Weeks in the upper school are split up in projects including work experience, outdoor weeks and even two times four weeks a year which are called the ‘boring period’ and mirror the strict curriculum of a ‘normal’ school. This enables students to try a variety of ways and this system has proved very successful in the last five years. The lower school also has project works which includes music and art. At the moment, the topic is Edvard Munch, a famous Norwegian painter (You might know ‘The Scream’). In both the upper and lower school, Maths, Norwegian and English are basically taught every day. There are no ‘private’ schools in Norway, every school has to be connected to the state system. As a result, the school is 85% state funded, with parents paying around 90 pounds a month for which the children are also provided with a hot lunch, and has to follow the national curriculum. After growing up with the stereotype of how amazing Scandinavian schooling is, it was a little bit of a shock to my system to hear how tightly everything is controlled by the state and that a socialist society also means that every school should be the same and offer the same structures. Homeschooling is forbidden and every school has to be approved by the state. Initiatives like in the UK, with parents founding their own schools and private companies paying for charter schools, are not allowed- for better or for worse.

While there are around 100 Waldorf Schools, ca 40 Montessori schools and many Jenaplan schools, the democratic school is the only one of its kind in Norway and remains a spot of bother to the state system. The only way it has managed to survive in the last years is to keep to state legislation, follow the national curriculum (in one way or another) and assign tests twice a year. However, there is no homework and at the heart of the school philosophy is love and respect for each other.

I might sound a little bit like the prospectus here, but I immediately felt the difference when I arrived in the morning. I had been given a lovely guide, Mona, who took me to the school meeting and had lots of time to chat. Everybody was very friendly and a lot of the kids were really happy to talk to me- in English! All of them said how much they enjoyed their time at the school and that they would never go back to the state system. What some of them especially liked was the fact that the students often helped each other in the lessons and that the age difference did not really matter. I was also free to have a look at the different classes and year groups, hang out in the kitchen, talk to lots of teachers and just spend time with the children. The student-staff relationship could not have been more different from a normal school: The teachers knew all of the kids’ names and treated them very much like they were all a big family. Coming from a British school, I was astonished to see teachers touching students- scandalous! :-) Imagine, I also took pictures without being threatened to be taken to court.

Although I would not say that the school is democratic in the strict sense of the Summerhill model as children have to attend fixed lessons, it is still very much child centred and children have the opportunity to change the way the school is run. Every morning the two parts of the school meet up to discuss the plan for the day. Any child and adult are free to report any personal news and everybody has to wait for their turn to speak. Once a week, the whole school meets up to discuss any issues that have come up over the last days and children have the chance to request projects and feedback on lessons. It was really interesting to see how the school adapts to the state system in order to stay open and yet finds ways to give power to students.

I had planned to go back to the school today and have a look at two English lessons at the Upper School, but unfortunately my flue made is pretty much impossible. I felt so bad today that I was barely able to leave the bed, not even talking about enjoying Oslo, but I am still glad I came. It comes to show that there is nothing that can replace the real life experience of such an amazing place. Thanks to Ryanair’s super cheap flights I really hope to come back for a few days some time in the next months and experience some more everyday life in this lovely community! Hopefully this is just the first of many free and democratic schools which I will visit in the next months and years.

More thoughts on the school and its structure and pictures tomorrow when I am back home!

PS: Digressing from the topic a little bit: last Saturday before the film festival meeting, I went to the concert of the University of Cambridge Chamber Orchestra. They were playing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concertos in E minor and I have been listening to the concertos these past four days. I have to say that they go very well with Oslo and the cold. Just like the Kings of Leon clearly recorded their last album to be listening to on the Parisian Metro at night :-)