Pupils in primary and lower secondary school, 1 October 2003

From the school year 1997/98, the proportion of pupils who receives additional training in Norwegian has increased from 4.4 to 5.7 per cent¹.

Urdu is most common

Almost 20 000 pupils received mother tongue training in primary and lower secondary schools.

Urdu was by far the most common language for pupils who received mother tongue training. Despite a reduction of 300 from the previous year, more than 2 500 pupils received mother tongue training in Urdu. For Somali, Kurdish, Arabic, Vietnamese, Albanian and Bosnian more than 1 000 pupils received mother tongue training.

Nynorsk slightly down

In 2003, almost 90 000 pupils used Nynorsk, one of the two official forms of Norwegian. This figure has been stable in the last few years, but due to the general increase of pupils in the same period the proportion of pupils who use Nynorsk has fallen slightly and now amounts to 14.5 per cent.

527 000 pupils used Bokmål, the other official form of Norwegian, and less than 1 000 pupils used Sámi.

More than 617 000 pupils in primary and lower secondary school

In the autumn of 2003 more than 617 000 pupils were registered in 3 209 primary and lower secondary schools in Norway. Since 1997, the total number of pupils has increased by almost 60 000.

¹  Corrected 24.06.2004.

Tables:

• Table 1 Primary and lower secondary schools. Pupils in primary and lower secondary school. School years 1979/80-2003/04
• Table 2 Pupils in primary and lower secondary school, by county. School year 2003/04. Preliminary numbers
• Table 3 New and closed schools, by county. October 2002-October 2003. Preliminary figures
• Table 4 Pupils in primary school, by grade. School year 2003/04. Preliminary figures
• Table 5 Pupils, by school size (number of pupils). School years 1997/98-2003/04. Per cent. Preliminary figures
• Table 6 Number of schools, pupils in primary and secondary schools and pupils in other permanent groups of organization, by municipality. 1 October 2003
• Table 7 Pupils with native language training, bilingual education and additional training in Norwegian, by county. 1 October 2003. Corrected 24.06.2004
• Table 8 Pupils with native language training and additional training in Norwegian. School years 1992. Corrected 24.06.2004
• Table 9 Pupils receiving mother language traning or biligual education, by mother tongue. 1 October 2003
• Table 10 Pupils, by official form of Norwegian and county. 1 October 2003