Inclusion in Norwegian Folk High Schools: A Quantitative Study of Student Perceptions in Schools with Further Accommodations

The right to education is important in today’s society and the UN Convention for the Rights for Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is calling for full inclusion in every area of society, including education. Yet research shows that students who have disabilities are less included in school than others. This presentation relates this to the context of Norwegian folk high schools and explores young people’s perception of inclusion within an educational institution that sets itself apart from most other forms of education. Folk high school is a one-year school year usually completed after upper secondary school, where students live in a boarding school and attend classes without grades or exams and with a focus on personal development. The schools included in this study also had an additional focus on accommodating for students with disabilities.

The study is based on a survey of 449 youth and young adults who attended a Norwegian folk high school in the 23/24 school year.

The results of the correlational analyses between students’ perception of inclusion and the disability field suggest that students in folk high schools generally feel very included, but that students who need accommodations in their daily life, feel less included than students who do not have such needs. This illuminates that even folk high schools are still not on target to fully include all students.