Julie Remen Midtgarden, Oslo’s Councillor for Education, is concerned. Every year, pupils disappear from Oslo schools because their parents send them back to their home country for years on end.
When the children return, they do not speak Norwegian and their academic standards are lower than those of their peers, according to Midtgarden.
She believes that parents should think carefully about this.
“We’re not going to ban people from moving, but we believe it’s important to focus more on this,” she tells Avisa Oslo.
Greater focus. Whilst the children are attending Koranic schools in Somalia.
Because nobody mentions that at all. Not the headteacher, not the councillor, not the journalist. Apparently, it’s all just about language, assessment and intensive Norwegian language training when they return home. Nothing is said about the fact that many of the children have been sent away precisely to become less Norwegian.
This isn’t something I’ve made up. NRK has exposed this time and again since 2017. Norwegian-Somali children were sent to Koranic schools in Somalia and Kenya, where some were chained up, beaten and locked away. The Norwegian authorities have called it torture. One of the schools advertised on YouTube that it ‘converts’ children who have become too Western.
– “Some are sent to learn more about language, culture and religion, and parents may feel that they have become too ‘Norwegian’,” said Norway’s Special Envoy for Integration in Kenya, Ali Mubarak, to NRK.
Too ‘Norwegian’. That, then, is the problem the parents want to solve.
The figures are by no means small. At least 415 children were left behind abroad against their will between 2016 and 2018 alone, according to a report to the Ministry of Education and Research. In 2023 alone, the embassy in Kenya tried to help 99 people who had been left behind there. And in Oslo, there were 1,257 school-age children abroad in the summer of 2023, whilst 447 had an unknown place of residence.
No one knows where they are or what they are learning.
A government-appointed expert group also found that, in some cases, the Child Welfare Services actually supported families who wanted to send their children to Koranic schools. The Child Welfare Services, mind you. The very same child welfare services that otherwise do not hesitate to remove children from Norwegian homes.
Then these children return home and are placed in the ‘reception system’. One to two years of intensive Norwegian language training, reports Avisa Oslo. Paid for by Oslo City Council. But does anyone really believe that a boy who has spent years memorising the Koran at a Somali boarding school will come back here and want to become Norwegian?
A proper brainwashing was, after all, exactly what the parents wanted.
And who pays for the journey? Many of these parents came here as refugees, from the very same countries to which they are now sending their children back. It is not cheap to keep a child abroad for several years. Five years ago, the Storting asked the government to investigate whether public benefits could be suspended when children are sent out of the country and held there against their will. The question remains just as pertinent.
To what extent are Norwegian taxpayers funding this ‘educational trip’?
The city councillor wants parents to think carefully. And that is precisely what the parents have done. That is why they are sending their children abroad.
