The aim of this paper is to map, describe, and analyse how educational inequality is conceptualised in the Norwegian policy discourse of the last decade. By this, we shed light on how educational inequality is understood in contemporary policy discourse with a focus on what solutions – based on problem framing – are proposed for tackling them. The policy discourse characterising Norwegian educational policy formulation in the last 10 years is teased out by using several key white papers as data for our qualitative content analysis. To reduce complexity, only milestone documents from the last ten years were used. The focus has been on uncovering the general discourse found to pervade key policy documents in recent years. The white papers used as data are documents provided by Government and presented to Parliament to enable discussions that may form basis for resolutions, bills, or reforms to be implemented at a later stage. Thus, they are ideal for mapping discourse used by Government. In our qualitative content analysis of the selected documents, several methodological frameworks were used as guidelines. The “What’s the Problem Represented to be” approach developed by Bacchi (2009) facilitates analysing public policies by uncovering “problems” represented in policy formulation. Thus, we mapped the main problems and analysed what is not problematized in the selected white papers. Additionally, we have contextualised the identified problems by investigating which presumptions or assumptions underlie them as well as how the problem definitions have come about. As such, the results are discussed in the context of Norwegian educational policy development of the last five decades. As our analysis indicates, several dilemmas and paradoxes are present in the contemporary Norwegian policy discourse on tackling educational inequality. At the core of Norwegian policy for tackling educational inequality is the inclusion-unequal treatment argument. In this regard, our analysis reveals that the Norwegian policy problem framing of educational inequality – mainly defined via unequal outcome – promotes the idea that unequal treatment of pupils for the sake of equal outcome makes the silver bullet for tackling educational inequality. However, educational inequality persists in Norway, and in light of classical reflection about the (re)production of inequality through schooling (Bowles and Gintis 2003; Coleman 1966, 1982; Bourdieu and Passeron 1977; Collins 1979) we argue that unequal treatment for equal outcome will – under standardisation, top-down control and neo-liberalisation of formal education – not be sufficient to mitigate educational inequality given the increasing diversity of students.

Bacchi, C. L. (2009). Analysing policy: what's the problem represented to be? Frenchs Forest, N.S.W: Pearson Australia. Bourdieu, P., and J.-C. Passeron. 1977. Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. London & Beverly Hills: Sage. Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. 2003. "Schooling in Capitalist America Twenty-Five Years Later." Sociological Forum 18 (2):343-348. Coleman, James S. 1966. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington, U.S.: Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Coleman, James S. 1982. The Asymmetric Society. New York: Syracuse. Collins, Randall Alfred. 1979. The credential sociology : an historical sociology of education and stratification. New York, N.Y.: Academic Press.