National tests were introduced in Norway in 2004 as part of the quality assessment and school development system after concerns had been raised by OECD (1988) and results from international comparative assessments like the Programme for International Student Assessment 2001. In some countries, standardized tests are used as a basis of making changes in practice, often backed with sanctions against teachers, schools and principals (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009). Such "high-stake-testing regimes" may lead to schools focusing the resources on what is to be tested and measured, or on removing students who may reduce the school results (Jacob, 2005; Reback, 2008). In Norway, the National tests do not officially have a corresponding function or leads to sanctions for how the schools run. Still, some critics have claimed that test results have been used as grounds for rewards, such as increased salary to rectors who can show improved results on the National tests (e.g. Marsdal, 2011). However, no such cases have been documented by scholars in Norway (Hopfenbeck (2014, p. 412). On the other hand, the results of the National tests are published for a general audience. News media are today the most important source about politics and current affairs, and journalism has become a social construction of reality (e.g. Altheide, 2004; Gunther & Mughan, 2000). It is likely that school practices have been deeply affected by media’s impact as well. A Norwegian study shows that schools that experience negative media coverage after poor results, change their practice and put more emphasis on what is measured by the tests (Elstad, 2009). The media discourse has most likely had a significant influence on how the school has been perceived by the general public, decision-makers and professionals. One important issue here is the school’s role as an instrument of social equality and inclusion. Over 97 percent of Norwegian children attend a public school owned by their municipality, and the Norwegian educational system has a solid tradition of inclusion, equity and equality in the educational system (Haugen, Hestbek, & Øfsti, 2014; Solstad, 2004). In some municipalities, notably Oslo, parents may choose which school their children will attend. In this context, the media image may be of great importance not only to the schools’ practice directly, but also to the recruitment to each school and thereby to the inclusionary role of the public school system. In any case, the mass media has had an extensive role in creating the widespread belief that the educational system is in crisis, a fear that has increased over the years (Fladmoe & Leiulfsrud, 2012, p. 9).

There are few studies on the effect news media has had on the development of educational thinking and the perceived school quality. With this backdrop, we have tried to elucidate how national tests are negotiated in the national and regional newspapers from 2004 to 2017. More specifically, we ask a) what topics the media debates have focused on, b) who has been given a platform for voicing their opinions, and c) what these agents express about national tests. 

We will study the media debate through the lenses of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2003). To start with, we have searched for articles in both national and regional newspapers during the time-frame from 2004 to 2017. We have used the keywords: «nasjonale prøver» and resultat* and skole* [national tests AND result* AND school*]. The texts we will analyze are written within the framework of specific newpaper genres, which in part determines what may be uttered and what effect the utterance may have. The analysis also has to take into account the mechanisms of the media culture and the material and economical context, constituting a certain order of discourse (Fairclough, 2003, p. 24). We have chosen to focus on texts and utterances in newspapers, as we see news coverage not only as an important source for public information, but also as a driving force in political processes, and an arena for negotiating the content and use of the national tests. In our analysis, we have been looking for texts that express important actors’ conception of national tests. We will read these texts looking for how different social actors are ascribed different authority, roles, and modes of portraying the tests. Further, we will look for how the discourses in question are enacted through the media texts, or instilled by the actors. We study these texts as representations of different ideas of what the national tests are, or of what they are hoped to be – e.g. questions of school quality.

Preliminary results from the analyses indicate a shift in the debate from the time national tests were introduced to the Norwegian educational system until today. From the outset, the debate has focused on the values of the tests, as well as whether the test results should be made public or not and the consequences of such a publication. As time has passed, it appears as if the tests have been accepted. The debate has become a negotiation of different explanations for why certain test results are achieved, depending on the speaker’s perspective and context. In addition, the debate turns into blame game-discussions when the results are lower than expected. This then leads to narrowing the concept of quality of the school and a certain ordering of the voices in the debate.

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