The political priorities in the co-operation programme reflect challenges that are common to the entire Nordic Region, and for which the Nordic countries can jointly work to offer solutions and Nordic added value.
The Nordic Region is well positioned to meet the societal challenges it faces. The Nordic countries all have good nurseries, schools and education programmes, and a highly educated population. The countries invest a large share of their GDPs in education and research, and the higher-education institutions in the Nordic Region are competitive within international rankings. Moreover, the level of trust placed in research and knowledge development within the Nordic Region is generally high. All of the Nordic countries participate actively in European research collaborations; they all have internationally strong academic environments, and they all score high when it comes to innovation. The Nordic Region is home to a rich linguistic diversity, and the mutual intelligibility of the Scandinavian languages gives the Nordic Region a competitive edge compared to other similar regions.
However, it is also true that education and research in the region have many considerations to accommodate. On the one hand, education and research have a mandate to promote the value of knowledge, the formation of the individual, opinion-forming and socialisation. At the same time, they are also increasingly expected to meet the needs of society for an adaptable labour force, to be socially relevant and to function as a tool that can help find answers to current and future problems.
This leaves us, then, with an overall picture that underscores the need for education and knowledge, and which requires us to think in new ways. Educational programmes in the Nordic countries are generally high in quality, and they score above the EU average in international surveys of fundamental skills. However, both statistics and international surveys also show that the level of fundamental skills in the Nordic Region is in decline, and that the education sector is increasingly being influenced by other factors such as social, linguistic and cultural background, in addition to social media. Differences between girls and boys can have an impact on school performance, sense of belonging at school and what students choose to study, and there exists a trend towards greater social inequality, discontent and concerning levels of absenteeism and drop-out rates among children and teenagers. The number of vulnerable children and young people with complex problems is on the rise in the Nordic countries.
The onset of new technologies and digitalisation is also affecting the education and research sector to an ever greater extent – this is a development which results both in uncertain consequences as well as potential opportunities. Digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, can affect central actors and processes of democracy, but they can also lead to innovation. In the future, there will be a considerable need to establish the necessary frameworks and to find the right level in terms of how such technologies should be used within education and research systems.
The future of work will bear the mark of the green and digital transition, and will involved both new professions and new ways of working. Studying will therefore remain important, both in order to upgrade existing competencies within the population and also in terms of getting more people into employment. The education system and labour market in the Nordic Region are still altogether too divided on the grounds of gender, and challenges are posed both by the growing number of people who are neither in work nor education, and by completion and drop-out rates, especially within vocational subjects. Even if the share of young people who are not in education or in training is below the average for OECD countries, it is nonetheless the case that too many people are excluded or not managing to realise their potential. Projections also show that the Nordic Region will face particular challenges in recruiting the occupational groups that it will need in the future, such as teachers, educators, nurses and other healthcare roles, as well as individuals with IT skills and engineers. For the Nordic Region, this means that there will not be enough people in central occupations to maintain the current level of the welfare system and ensure the transition that we need.
Research is becoming an increasingly more important part of society's development and is key both to succeeding within innovation and to the green and digital transition. The Nordic countries are home to strong academic environments which are already collaborating around key topics such as the green transition, the oceans, welfare and health, and the Arctic region, to name some examples. At the same time, there are many research bodies within the Nordic Region and a great deal of competition for research funds. Geopolitical tensions are generating a greater need for knowledge and for awareness around responsible international knowledge collaboration. Statistics also show other challenges such as uncertainty in the opportunities for career progression and gender divisions in academia.