Today, lifelong learning figures prominently within the education and training policies of governments throughout the developed world and is presented as a powerful solution to a wide range of economic and social challenges. In essence, the vision is one of a society where people have multiple opportunities to learn throughout life across a diversity of contexts. Despite a persistent and universal gap between rhetoric and reality, it is clear however that some countries have gone further in realising the goals of ‘lifelong learning for all’ than others. Norway, for example, has a highly educated population by international standards, invests considerable resources in its education and training system, and benefits from a long tradition of tripartism and consensus building. Its experience may therefore be instructive of the challenges that more advanced countries confront in attempting to further progress the lifelong learning ideal even under relatively favourable conditions.
Drawing upon a range of secondary material and interviews conducted with key stakeholders, the paper explores the main achievements, problems and challenges that Norway has faced in attempting to implement a recent reform of adult and continuing education and training, entitled the Competence Reform. To date, the reform would appear to have had little impact upon low qualified workers, especially in sectors with poor training records and relatively high concentrations of learning-deprived jobs. In reflecting upon this experience, Norwegian policy makers appear to be reaching the end of a cycle of policy and academic thinking concerned mainly with boosting the supply of skills through the education system and embarking upon a much more difficult and challenging agenda aimed at increasing the utilisation and development of skills within the workplace. In any advanced economy, however, there remains a residue of low skilled jobs which are not amenable to work redesign and which offer few opportunities for work-related learning. While the persistence of such jobs constitutes a major barrier to widening participation in adult learning, Norway may face a smaller problem than many other countries, not least the UK, where flexible labour market policies have contributed towards an economy more sharply polarised both in terms of skills and incomes.