📋 Tender Overview
New figures show that three out of ten kindergartens in Norway do not meet the pedagogical norm. The government is now starting work on a new strategy that will give the children a better daycare offer which among other things will help the daycare center to have more daycare teachers and more skilled workers. Almost 270000 children go to kindergarten. Today the Directorate of Education publishes new figures on the situation in Norwegian kindergartens.Kindergarten is the part of the educational process that means the most for children and young peoples development. Then it is a paradox that it is in the kindergarten that the competence level is lowest. The government wants the children to meet more employees with the right skills and raise the quality of the daycare offer says Minister of Education Tonje Brenna Labor.The new figures from the Directorate of Education show that there are more kindergartens than last year that meet the pedagogical norm. However 30 per cent of kindergartens still do not have enough kindergarten teachers to meet the requirement and thus have too many children per kindergarten teacher.The figures show that 44 per cent of the employees have a kindergarten teacher education 22 per cent are child and youth workers and 5 per cent have another skilled worker education. About 25 per cent have neither higher education nor relevant education and this proportion is highest in private kindergartens.Brenna warns that the government will abandon the previous governments kindergarten strategy and develop a new and more ambitious strategy. Tomorrow the Minister of Education and Research will meet a newly established National Kindergarten Forum with members from key players in the kindergarten sector. Together they will discuss how to develop the quality of the kindergarten towards 2030. A new strategy will be ready by the autumn.Fewer small kindergartensToday there are 5500 kindergartens in the country. The new figures show that there are fewer and fewer kindergartens. First and foremost there have been fewer of the smallest kindergartens with 25 children or fewer. The proportion of small kindergartens has decreased from 31 per cent in 2012 to 24 per cent today see figure.We see that there are fewer and fewer small kindergartens. The small privately owned and ideal kindergartens are important for providing a kindergarten offer close to peoples place of residence. Therefore we are concerned with giving these kindergartens better framework conditions and among other things give the municipality the opportunity to prioritize these says Brenna.The government will tighten the regulations for private kindergartens. It must ensure that public subsidies and parental payments go to daycare operations. This will also be something the new strategy will look at.Satisfied parents but a little dissatisfied with staffingThe Directorate of Education also publishes the results from the Parent Survey 2021 today. It shows that the parents are largely satisfied 93 per cent and that the corona situation does not seem to affect satisfaction. The parents are particularly pleased with the childs security and well-being in the kindergarten. One in ten parents is dissatisfied with the food offer while 16 percent are dissatisfied with the staffing density at the level of 2019.On the way out of a pandemic that has really shown how important kindergartens are for society to move around we must take action and ensure that it is both good for children to go to kindergarten and that our kindergartens are good workplaces.We will set clear requirements for temporary staffing requirements for a local manager and improve the staffing norm. In addition we must look at the tasks that take employees away from the children. This together with a strengthened municipal economy are important measures to improve the day-care centres everyday life says Brenna.
