During the school year 2019-2020, 14,412 pupils in compulsory education received special education or support, or 31.2% of all pupils. That is an increase of 750 pupils from the previous year, when 29.8% of pupils received support. Never before has a greater number of pupils received special support since Statistics Iceland started its data collection on special education in 2004-2005. Of pupils receiving special support, 60.7% were boys and 39.3% were girls. The number of pupils with a foreign mother tongue receiving support for learning Icelandic has never been higher and 3,448 pupils received this type of support in 2019-2020, an increase of almost 600 pupils from the previous year.
Fewer school days than in previous years
The average number of school days in 2019-2020 was 175.3, which is a decrease of 4.3 days from the previous school year. The main reason for the decrease is that schools were closed for some days due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Statistics Iceland will soon publish more data on the effect of Covid-19 on school days in compulsory schools during the 2019-2020 school year.
According to the law on compulsory schools from 2008, the annual school period for pupils should not be shorter than 9 months. The number of pupils’ school days during the school year should not be fewer than 180.
More than 38 thousand pupils in compulsory schools learned foreign languages
The number of pupils studying foreign languages in compulsory education has increased year by year. English is the first foreign language taught in compulsory schools and the most commonly learned language. During the school year 2019-2020, 38,089 pupils learned English in compulsory schools, 82.3% of pupils. English lessons usually start in grade 4 but English is taught in grades 1-3 in many schools. Most pupils start learning Danish in grade 7, at the age of 12, and almost 20 thousand pupils learned Danish in 2019-2020.