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More than 1,300 teachers in Norway to join strike 

Frazer Norwell
Frazer Norwell - [email protected]
More than 1,300 teachers in Norway to join strike 
Some 1,300 teachers in Norway will be taken out on strike from next Monday. Pictured is a classroom in Norway.Photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash

From Monday, over 1,300 teachers will join a strike affecting 14 municipalities and all of Norway's counties, except Oslo, the Education Association announced Wednesday. 

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Some 1,300 teachers will join a teachers' strike in Norway from Monday. The influx of striking teachers joins 45 education professionals who have been on strike in Bergen since before the summer holidays. 

"Ideally, our members would like to be in the classrooms and receive their students after the school holidays. But when KS chooses to make the teachers in the school pay losers for the sixth year in a row, we unfortunately have no other choice," Steffen Handal, head of the Education Association, said in a press release. 

The union leader added that the fact more teachers aren't being taken out on strike, to begin with, is a sign that the strike could be long-lasting with more teachers going on strike at a later date. 

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However, Handal did stress that he wanted a quick resolution to the strike to be reached. 

"We want the strike to last as short as possible, but everything depends on whether KS wants to return to the negotiating table or not, Handal said. 

All of the country's counties, apart from Oslo, will be affected by the strike. In addition, 14 municipalities will be affected by the strike. You can get an overview of which schools will be affected here

In Norway, counties are responsible for funding high-schools, while other schools are funded by the local municipality. This is why the strikes are spread across county and municipal level. 

Education unions are unhappy with the package offered to teachers by KS, which negotiates with the public sector on behalf of the government. The deal offered by KS was accepted by the public sector as a whole. 

KS has previously warned that it didn't have much room to negotiate as the money teachers are after has been "used up". 

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