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And Finally
Norwegian schools reschedule exams to accommodate The Bieber
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 8 April 2013
Part of me wonders if this is a Norwegian April Fools story that’s taken a week to filter through to the British press, but the quotes seem genuine. Five schools in the Norwegian town of Ålesund have rescheduled their exam timetable so that no tests clash with Justin Bieber’s scheduled appearance in the country’s capital Oslo later this month, fearing that too many students would skip exams to go and stalk the pop teen while he is in the country.
The headteacher at one of the affected schools apparently told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he reckoned about half the girls at his institution intended to go to Oslo when Bieber plays there, despite that requiring them to skip school. “We considered that this was a battle that we could not win”, he told the broadcaster, adding that the school’s exam schedule had been amended late last year “when we found out many students had already bought their tickets”.
But school officials in Oslo and Norway’s second city Bergen have said they won’t be making any concessions in their schedules when the Bieber visits the country, though Norwegian Minister Of Education Kristin Halvorsen said that Ålesund schools were at liberty to alter their exam schedules if they felt that was the best course of action. Halvorsen told the Associated Press: “We’ve all been fourteen years old and know that interests can be intense. The local schools have the responsibility to schedule the local midterms, and if they think there is any reason to change the dates, they have authority to do so”.
Of course, by the time Bieber is due to arrive in Oslo, he might have given up the increasingly controversial pop star malarkey for a more stable career as a tattoo artist. Though his first dabblings in that domain haven’t been without controversy either.
