Content
About the statistics
Definitions
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Name and topic
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Name: Household payments for kindergarten
Topic: Education
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Responsible division
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Division for Price Statistics
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Definitions of the main concepts and variables
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Free place: A free place in a kindergarten. May be given on various grounds.
Maximum fee: The government sets the highest fee a household should pay for one kindergarten place.
Additional fees: Fees for different activities, travel, and events that in some cases may arise in addition to the kindergarten fee and cost fee.
Free core time: This means that the child gets a certain amount of kindergarten hours for free. If the child is only in kindergarten this amount of hours, then there is no kindergarten fee.
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Standard classifications
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Classification on municipal and national level
Administrative information
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Regional level
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The survey results are published at municipality- and national level.
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Frequency and timeliness
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Frequency: Annual survey
Timeliness: Statistics based on January figures are published approximately three months after time of measurement.
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International reporting
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Not relevant
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Microdata
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Data at micro level are stored in excel and in SAS dataset on LINUX.
Background
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Background and purpose
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The purpose of this statistic is to map the average household payment for kindergarten. The survey was first established in 1992 on assignment from the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs (now Ministry of Education and Research). The survey is compiled on the basis of data collected in January each year. As of January 2003 the variables are weighted aggregations of public and private kindergartens. Numbers published in the series "Notater" including August 2002 consisted only of unweighted average numbers. As of January 2003 we no longer made a division between private kindergartens which receive municipal subsidy and the ones that do not. In 2007, the survey underwent a considerable change where electronic data opened for reporting from all municipalities through KOSTRA. The questionnaire was expanded in 2007 to include more questions concerning additional fees and rate reductions in the public kindergartens. Questionnaires to the private kindergartens were also somewhat equally expanded. From 2016, the data source changed from KOSTRA to BASIL. As a concequence of this, we now get self-reported data from all kindergartens, as well as from all municipalities.
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Users and applications
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The survey is used to assess the price leve of housholds payment for kindergatens, though mainly by the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, and by some of the municipalities.
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Equal treatment of users
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Not relevant
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Coherence with other statistics
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A report is compiled to the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training based on the same data material as the survey. The same datamaterial is also included in the consumer price index.
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Legal authority
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The Statistics Act of June 16, 1989 number 54 , §§2-2 and 2-3.
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EEA reference
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Not relevant
Production
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Population
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The survey includes all municipalities and all kindergartens in Norway.
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Data sources and sampling
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Electronic surveys through BASIL for all registered kindergartens in Norway, as well as for all municipalities.
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Collection of data, editing and estimations
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Both the municipalities and the kindergartens report on an electronic survey through BASIL. They report annually, with a deadline in January.
Revision is performed in SAS for both municipal and private kindergartens. The data is controlled towards last surveys answers to enable us to capture deviations. Internet is used as a source or the private kindergarten is contacted to correct logical errors, or to check for major deviation.
We calculate an average monthly household payment per child from the data that we receive. We use data on household income, how many children get sibling moderation, free places, local maximum fees, cost fees, and other fees.
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Seasonal adjustment
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Not relevant
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Confidentiality
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The use of data are in correspondance with the requirements from The Norwegian Data Protection Authorities. The information will be stored or properly annihilated.
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Comparability over time and space
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Houshold payments in the public kindergartens are comparable from 1992 to 2007 on municipality level. The aggregated levels are not comparable due to the introduction of weights in January 2003. From January 2017, former time series were cancelled, as the establishment of income graded fees nationally made point estimates less interesting.
Accuracy and reliability
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Sources of error and uncertainty
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Individual errors may arise from individual reporters understand the questions differently, or when we have partial nonreporting from kindergartens. In some cases, this is difficult to discover during data revision, while in other cases, we are able to discover it through logical tests and large changes from previous years. We do not, however, have any indication that we have a systematic problem in this regard.
Since we receive data from all municipalities and all kindergartens, we should not have a selection bias. In January 2018, about 2.9 per cent of all kindergartens report that they do not have any children. Most these are drop-in kindergartens. We do not know very much about these kindergartens, and they are not a part of our calculations. Since they are such a small share of the total amount of registered kindergartens, they should not be a problem.
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Revision
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Not relevant