Four science centers in Norway (all Ecsite members) have been assigned by the Ministry of Education and Research to develop and run a pilot of 3,5 years as learning centers for STEM talents. This is part of the Government’s strategy for stimulating talents and high performing students.

The centers will be launched at Nordnorsk Vitensenter (Tromsø), Trondheim Vitensenter (Trondheim), Oslo Vitensenter (Oslo) and VilVite (Bergen) the coming fall as one measure in the follow up of the new Maths and Science strategy, named “Tett på Realfag”. The Norwegian Science Center Association will coordinate the project during the piloting.

"This is a new and exciting program for high performing pupils in lower and upper secondary school", declared Torbjørn Røe Isaksen, the Norwegian Minister of Education and Research. "One objective is to increase the number of high performers and at the same time reduce the number of low performers. Today one out of five graduate from secondary school with insufficient skills and knowledge in mathematics, this is a major challenge for the Norwegian schools. At the same time, we have to give the talents something to reach for. STEM subjects are crucial to solve many of the challenges we face. Thus, we have to support the talents in their learning process." The Minister also underlined that the target groups are both pupils with a potential for high performance as well as pupils already showing high performance.

"The selection of pupils for the program will be made by the schools in cooperation with the participating science centers. Science camps, competitions and mentoring are activities mentioned by the Ministry as potential activities. One important goal is to establish well-functioning networks for the science talents", explained Svein Anders Dahl, CEO of VilVite. "Down the road, we intend to set up similar centers at all the 10 regional science centers if the pilot is successful."