The Discrimination Board believes that a school in Lillestrøm has been discriminating against students on the basis of their ethnicity for over two years.

This means that more students now have to change classes, writes Aftenposten.

Potentially driven by students’ parents who reacted to what they believed to be a skewed distribution of minority-language children in the classes.

In 2020, 76 students in first grade at a primary school in Lillestrøm municipality were divided into four classes.

It is not stated which ethnicities are involved, only that the proportion in the four classes was around 30 percent, 25 percent, 10 percent and 70 percent respectively.

The tribunal believes that the municipality has discriminated against the pupils and has given an order to change the composition of the classes before the new school year starts in the autumn.

This is a serious matter, with the tribunal also pointing out its assessment of whether to issue an order, says acting press officer Ingelin Gammersvik at the Discrimination Tribunal.

The school and the municipality say they did not know the ethnicity of the students when the classes were created, the ethnic distribution at the level is therefore a pure coincidence.

They also maintain that the classes have worked well.

But even if the tribunal agrees with this, they still believe that the municipality has indirectly discriminated.

This is because they believe that all students lose out from a skewed distribution and that students with a non-Western background lose the opportunity to share a common language and contact environment with Norwegian students.