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Norway to open schools and daycare to ‘vulnerable children’

Norway's government has called on local authorities who have closed schools and kindergartens due to the coronavirus lockdown to make exceptions for "vulnerable children and youth".

Published: 25 March 2020 18:23 CET

Norway to open schools and daycare to 'vulnerable children'

These kindergarten children are not to our knowledge classed as 'vulnerable'. Photo: Stiftelsen Kanvas

In a press release issued on Wednesday, the country's education minister Guri Melby called on municipalities to set aside “infection prevention considerations” for the most needy children.

“Many schoolchildren and pre-schoolers have lost a safe space now that schools and kindergartens are closed,” Melby said.

“That is why it is important that we give these children an offer where they can meet safe and good adults. Families do not need to have major, serious problems in order to get a place in a school or kindergarten for their children in the demanding situation many are facing now.”

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The statement marks the first sign of a relaxation of Norway's coronavirus lockdown, which closed schools and kindergartens for all children apart from those of socially critical workers, such as those in the health services, public transport or police.

Kjell Ingolf Ropstad, the country's minister for families and children, said that there was a long list of different categories of children who should be given an exception to the school closures.

“It might be children with illnesses or special needs. It might be families who have problems with alcohol, drugs or poor mental health. It might be parents with a high level of conflict,” he said in the press release. “Or it could be children who grew up in families with poor finances or who lack social networks.”

Ropstad called on schools and kindergartens to contact parents of children who might be in need of support and offer to find places for their children.

Schools in Sweden discriminate against parents with Arabic names: study

In one of the largest discrimination experiments ever carried out in the country, 3,430 primary schools were contacted via email by a false parent who wanted to know more about the school. The parent left information about their name and profession.

In the email, the false parent stated that they were interested in placing their child at the school, and questions were asked about the school’s profile, queue length, and how the application process worked. The parent was either low-educated (nursing assistant) or highly educated (dentist). Some parents gave Swedish names and others gave “Arabic-sounding” names.

The report’s author, Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh said that the study had demonstrated “relatively large and statistically significant negative effects” for the fictional Arabic parents.

“Our results show that responses to emails signed with Arabic names from school principals are less friendly, are less likely to indicate that there are open slots, and are less likely to contain positive information about the school,” he told The Local.

READ ALSO: Men with foreign names face job discrimination in Sweden: study

The email responses received by the fictional Arabic parents were rated five percent less friendly than those received by the fictional Swedish parents, schools were 3.2 percentage points less likely to tell Arabic parents that there were open slots at the school, and were 3.9 percentage points less likely to include positive information about the municipality or the school.

There was no statistically significant difference in the response rate and number of questions answered by schools to Swedish or Arabic-sounding parents.

Taghizadeh said that there was more discrimination against those with a low social-economic status job than against those with an Arabic name, with the worst affected group being those who combined the two.

“For socioeconomic discrimination, the results are similar, however, here the discrimination effects are somewhat larger,” he told The Local.

Having a high economic status profession tended to cancel out the negative effects of having an Arabic name.

“The discrimination effects are substantially important, as they could potentially indirectly influence parents’ school choice decision,” Taghizadeh said.

“Investigating socioeconomic discrimination is also important in itself, as discrimination is seldom studied and as explicit discrimination legislation that bans class-based discrimination is rare in Western countries including Sweden, in contrast to laws against ethnic discrimination.”

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