Contextualized by an increasing focus on talent development and the ways in which the school system in several European countries meet the elite few (Green, 2004; Houlihan, 2009), and the growth of different public and private schools programs which in the regulated markets (quasi-markets) bring into play competitive forces making the providers more responsive to the interests, needs and concerns among students and their parents (Ball, 2008), the focus of this paper is the establishment of ‘elite sport’ as an elective school subject in the Norwegian national curriculum. In the 2006 curriculum reform, discursively named ‘The Knowledge Promotion’, elite sport was configured as ‘official knowledge’ (Apple, 2000, 2003; Bernstein, 2000) for pupils age 16-19 in the Norwegian school system. However, compared to the political emphasis on the school system’s contribution to national elite sport ambitions and the considerable debates and the focus for government intervention in the UK, pointed at by Houlihan (2009), elite sport in the Norwegian context has not been specifically considered or handled as part of any education policy report, or made the subject of any public debates.

Contextualized by the education policy silence characteristic in the 2006 reform process and the establishment of elite sport as official knowledge, this paper analyzes discourses of ‘what counts’ as official knowledge (Bernstein, 2000; Apple, 2000) in the national school system as school subjects are adapted to meet market demands. This paper focus upon the political awareness of the interests of students and parents repositioned as consumers free to choose schools, the national elite sport popularity and ambitions, and the interests of powerful organizations in the Norwegian society.  

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