Despite having a comprehensive model of education, like all the other Nordic countries, Norway has experienced a high number of students dropping out of secondary education. Almost all 16-year-olds start upper secondary education in Norway, but about one-third of them do not complete within the five years that they have a legal right to access upper secondary education (SSB, 2018). This is seen as a big societal and political problem and is an indicator that the education system is at risk of failing its responsibility to these students. Over the last 25 years, hybrid school governance has developed: national policies and regulations have been introduced to prevent dropout along with regional monitoring systems to follow up on school results that combine performance-based and professional accountabilities, and financial models promoting marketisation and competition. This paper analyses how regional educational authorities (county level) and school leaders in upper secondary schools interpret and translate policy interventions to prevent dropout into practice. The aim is to examine the role of subjective variables and processes of meaning making in the mediation of such interventions. The analysis includes data from interviews with educational authorities in three counties that were selected according to completion rates over time and geographical location, and data from observations of annual steering dialogues between educational authorities and leaders in six upper secondary schools. Enactment and sensemaking approaches are used to analyse the data to provide a nuanced understanding of how the informants react to and apply new policy prerogatives in specific socio-institutional settings (Ball et al., 2011; Falabella, 2014). Even though completion rates represent the main indicator in the quality assurance systems, findings show that educational authorities adapt strategies to follow up the work of the schools, in particular their emphasis on accountabilities and the role of school development. Digital technologies play an important role to monitor school results and seem to promote a new professionalism around discourses and practices to retain students in secondary education and transform interactions between actors at county and school levels.

Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2011). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Routledge. Statistics Norway (2018). Arbeidskraftsundersøkelsen. https://www.ssb.no/arbeid-og-lonn/statistikker/aku/kvartal