HERSLEB SCHOOL (VG) The government gives the country’s 820,000 school pupils the statutory right to take part in all school decisions that concern them.
This will be evident from the proposal for a new Education Act which will be tabled on Friday, confirms Minister of Education Tonje Brenna (Ap) to VG.
She met future leader Petter Andreas Lona in the Student Organization in the schoolyard at Hersleb upper secondary school on Thursday.
Brenna, not quite proudly, talked about the long road until the students can demand co-determination with the law in hand.
She herself was a student council leader at home at Jessheim in Romerike growing up, and she has fought for more real student democracy in the AUF leadership as a young person.
– So it is extra big for me to be allowed to present a new education act where we propose to legislate for the first time that students should have the right to participate in all matters that concern their everyday life, says Brenna to VG.
She believes and hopes that student participation, which is anchored in the new Education Act, will mean that students are heard in more matters than today.
Through student democracy, the students should be allowed to participate in the entire school’s operations, including in matters other than whether the school should have a soda machine or the content of the activity day, emphasizes Brenna.
– Both because society changes, and because respect for children and young people changes over generations,
then it is necessary that we take student democracy one step further, and say that students should also be allowed to participate in all school matters that concern them, she says.
Like-participation?
– Can’t it easily become a sham democracy or a kind of co-determination for the students?
– It’s just words on paper until we follow it up, and until all school leaders, teachers, students, student councils and the Student Organization, and everyone who is interested in the school, work well with this. But it is at least a very clear signal from the legislature that we think this is important, replies Brenna, who has the impression that both students and teachers are also concerned about this.
She emphasizes that the school owners and state administrators must ensure that the schools actually practice student participation and follow the new legislation, which will apparently be adopted in the Storting.
– Must prioritize student participation
The students’ foremost spokesperson is Petter Andreas Lona, new leader of the Student Organization. He is satisfied with the government’s legalization of pupil influence – without falling to his knees in servile praise of Brenna in the schoolyard at Tøyen in Oslo.
Lona points out that student democracy does not work equally well in practice in all schools.
– That is why it is so important that we get it legislated and included in the Education Act. And that it is stated in the law that pupils must have a right to participate. I think it will lead to schools actually having to prioritize student participation, says Petter Andreas Lona to VG.
Astrid Hoem, leader of the Labor Party’s youth organization AUF, recalls who has been the driving force behind legislating participation for pupils.
– AUF proposed this in 2011, when Tonje (Brenna) was in charge of AUF. This is a victory both for children and young people, but also for many of us who work with youth policy. It emphasizes that student participation should not be a sham democracy, but a real student democracy at each individual school, says Hoem.
– Do you see any pitfalls?
– No, I really don’t. I don’t think there are so many pitfalls in letting young people participate and decide more in their everyday lives, Hoem replies.
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