Christian school Norway in financial problems because of grant cut

13-06-2022

Northern Europe

A Christian school in Norway has to fire employees and increase student fees because of financial problems. Recently, the Norwegian government decided to reduce subsidies to private schools strongly. Therefore, Danielsen secondary school in Bergen now has a deficit of four million kroner (almost 400,000 euros).

To compensate for the loss of national grants, the Danielsen school will increase its student fee by 160 kroner per month, starting this autumn. That is reported by Dagen. Furthermore, the board laid off employees through voluntary resignation, leave and dismissal, and started a fundraiser among former students, parents and friends of the school.

The Norwegian government based the height of the subsidy for private schools on the money public schools spent in 2020. However, that year, school life was affected by the Covid pandemic, and costs decreased sharply.

Socialist Party will not block government plans

According to the Secretary-General of the Christian Free Schools Association (KFF), most independent schools will experience severe consequences from the grant cut. Jorunn Hallaråker Heggelund says so to Dagen. According to the Secretary-General, several schools have turned to the KFF to see what they can do to avoid taking drastic steps such as raising tuition fees.

When the grant cut was announced last year, the Association hoped that the government would compensate for the cut in subsidy to independent schools in a different way. But even when a report commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Research showed that the grant for this year was too low, this did not happen, Dagen writes.

The final solution for the independent schools would lay with Norway's Socialist Party (SV). The Norwegian Storting needs socialist support to approve its national budget. However, the education policy spokesman of the SV says not to be willing to solve the problem for independent schools. "The government itself must make sure that the calculations of financial support to independent schools are correct", he writes in an e-mail to Dagen.

According to the State Secretary of the Ministry of Education, private schools are responsible for dealing with the grant cut. "Private schools receive state subsidies based on what the public sector spends on schools, and the schools must consider that the subsidy basis can fluctuate from year to year." The State Secretary furthermore says that compensation is not possible. "The overall assessment is that no errors have occurred in the subsidy calculation. Thus, the question of compensation is not relevant."