The Discrimination Council believes that a school in Lillestrøm has discriminated against students based on their ethnicity for more than two years. Now more students have to change classes.

In 2020, 76 students started first grade at an elementary school in the municipality of Lillestrøm. They were divided into four classes, wrote Aftenposten.

Parents of students are reacting to what they believe is the skewed distribution of minority-speaking children in the classroom. The proportions in the four classes are approximately 30 percent, 25 percent, 10 percent and 70 percent, respectively.

Pupils are now in the third stage with equal distribution, but now the municipality is required to change classes following a Discrimination Board decision.

The court believed that the municipality had discriminated against pupils, and had given an order to change class composition before the new school year started in the fall.

– This is a serious matter, which the court also indicated in its judgment whether to issue an order, said press officer Ingelin Gammersvik at the Discrimination Court,

The school and city administration said they did not know what ethnicity students belonged to when classes were made and therefore the distribution of ethnicity at those levels was purely coincidental. They also maintain that the class has worked well.

The court agreed with this, but still believed that the city government had indirectly discriminated against. They point to the fact that all students are deprived due to a skewed distribution, and that students with non-Western backgrounds are deprived of opportunities to share a common language and surface contact with Norwegian students.

(© NTB)