Trondheim · time Bispegata
Trondheim is not a suburb of Oslo. It is a university city with a state-supported English-medium house that ends at Year 10. Ask which paper comes next, and how Norwegian the yard is.
Trondheim is not “Oslo, further north.” It is a university city whose public grunnskole is allowed to be first, plus one official English-medium door posting families name in the first week: a Cambridge-and-IPC house by the cathedral that stops at 16.
The portrait we have is Birralee International School at Bispegata 9c. Use it for the 2026 monthly kroner — not the 2025 range still on the home page — and for the February deadline. This note is the city around it. The Norway country page is the wider map — Oslo’s three climates, Stavanger, Bergen, Sandefjord, the UWC in the fjord.
Birralee sits in the centre, near Nidaros, NTNU and St Olav’s. IPC, IMYC, Cambridge IGCSE. State-supported fees. Free ASP hours in Years 1–3. Kindergarten on the same site is a bilingual 3–6 house with its own mailbox. There is no IB Diploma on Bispegata.
If the next paper is the IB, you will walk another city in another season: OIS, Skagerak, UWC Red Cross Nordic. Sixteen is not six.
The municipal grunnskole and a later videregående are official mornings. Families looking at Birralee often also walk the school their address already names, because the next five years may still be Norwegian.
Oslo’s waitlists are a different weather. Bergen’s rain is a different year. Stavanger fills when the postings fill. Trondheim keeps fewer English-medium seats than families hope when they first look at a map. That can be a gift after a capital list.
The language of the yard is the test. National tests in reading and numeracy are in Norwegian. Ask how much of that language a shy eight-year-old really has by Year 5.
Ask whether the 1 February file is still the file that matters for this August. Ask what happens at 16. Ask the kindergarten for its own fee; we will not invent it. Time Bispegata on a dark Tuesday, then the municipal gate.
The city hub is the short map. The portrait is the long one.
Friendly orientation, not formal admissions advice. Always confirm dates with the school.
A state-supported English-medium house in the centre of Trondheim, not an Oslo IB campus. 2026 monthly fees are public. It ends at Year 10. The diploma years live elsewhere.
SageneA German-Norwegian Begegnungsschule in the park at Myra, not the IB campus in Bærum and not the French lycée in Frogner. Monthly fees follow Norwegian makspris. The leaving papers are the German International Abitur and the Norwegian Vitnemål.
SandsliA west-coast day school on Sandslihaugen, 15 km from Bergen centre, not Bekkestua and not Hafrsfjord. The Board’s 2026–27 schedule prints kroner for B1, B2 and C. Tuition A is upon application. The campus stops at Grade 10.
HafrsfjordAn oil-town international school on Treskeveien, not in the city centre. The Board’s 2026–27 policy prints one Category 1 tariff from Kindergarten through Grade 12. Early Years is a different story, because Stortinget sets that monthly price.
The letters on the leaver’s certificate matter. They are not the whole child. Here is how to tell them apart without a headache, and without pretending every door stays open.
16 minYou do not need a perfect algorithm. You need a few true things about your child, a boring list on the fridge, and the courage to ignore a beautiful campus that does not fit.
15 minTuition is the number on the homepage. The PDF is the number that arrives in March. Here is how to read the second one, without inventing a euro, a krona, or a deadline.
12 minSkip the question about last year’s average. Ask the ones that make a teacher’s face change. Then look at the corridor while they answer.