Guri Melby

Guri Melby (born 3 February 1981) is a Norwegian politician for the Liberal Party.

From 1999 to 2006 she was a member of the municipal council in Orkdal, and a member of the city council in Trondheim from 2007 to 2011.

She was Venstre's top candidate in South Trøndelag in the elections for the Storting on 14 September 2009.

Locally, she has also served as Oslo's City Commissioner for Transport and the Environment between 2013 and 2015.

She was born in Orkdal in South Trøndelag to Terje and Berit Melby, a bank clerk and school assistant.

Currently, she is married to Thomas Hansen and has three children.

She was a deputy member of the Storting from Oslo for the terms 2013–2017 and 2017–2021.

From October 2013 to 2015, she served as the Oslo city commissioner for public transport and environmental affairs.

She took over from Ola Elvestuen, who had been elected to Parliament following the 2013 parliamentary election.

She was succeeded by Lan Marie Nguyen Berg after the coalition was defeated following the 2015 local elections.

When Trine Skei Grande was appointed to Solberg's Cabinet in 2018, Melby moved up to full representative, which she was until Grande resumed her duties in 2020.

Melby was elected a regular representative in the 2021 election.

In addition, she joined the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence, also becoming its second vice chair.

In 2019, she and Petter Eide from the Socialist Left Party, demonstrated at Eidsvolls plass during the Norwegian reception of Li Zhanshu, the chairman of the National People's Congress's Standing Committee.

Melby and Eide were asked to take off their yellow T-shirts with the inscription "freedom" in Norwegian and Mandarin before they could enter the Storting.

Melby stated afterwards that it was "at best naive of the Storting to accept that our democratic rules are deceived by a manipulative system, at worst we have allowed ourselves to be dictated, and that is even worse".

She has served as the party leader since 2020 and Minister of Education from 2020 to 2021.

She is also a member of parliament for Oslo since 2021, having previously been a deputy member for the same constituency between 2013 and 2021.

Following Trine Skei Grande's decision to resign as minister and party leader in March 2020, Melby was asked by Grande personally if she wanted to succeed her as minister.

She expressed sorrow by Grande's resignation, saying that "being education minister was her dream job".

Her appointment also coincided with the lockdown and closing of schools in Norway due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In January 2021, she went against professional advice to exclude homeschool for students, despite the infection level being at yellow.

She was criticised by many educational experts for her decision, but she defended it by saying that it would be up to the schools respectively to decide and notify their county governor about it.

She was however supported by the lecturer team, the Education Association and the Oslo City Commission for Knowledge and Education.

On 8 February, she announced that exams for departing students in lower secondary and upper secondary would be cancelled.

However, oral exams would still go ahead for tenth graders' on lower secondary and year three in upper secondary.

Melby stated: "We would very much like to have completed all the exams as planned. There have been some very different offers of education for the pupils this school year, which provides a different basis for assessment. A common and equal written exam is therefore no longer a suitable test of what the students have learned".

In March, she expressed that close contacts in schools needed to be reduced and encouraged schools to borrow premises if necessary.

She also stressed the importance to keep students physically at school as much as possible.

She also expressed scepticism to Oslo's Knowledge and Education Commissioner's proposal to keep schools in Oslo at a yellow level.

In late March, she caused controversy when she suggested establishing a new school subject in upper secondary schools focusing on democracy, equality and ethical issues, allegedly replacing or overriding the history subject.

She quickly apologised for her statement, and said it came out wrong.

The leader of the Norwegian Lecturer Team, Rita Helgesen, criticised Melby, stating that she had created a new subject that was not a subject at all.

The Conservative's Turid Kristensen also criticised Melby, stating that they didn't want to build down common subjects.

Following the cabinet's defeat at the 2021 election, she was succeeded by Tonje Brenna on 14 October.

On 19 August 2020, she announced her intention to stand for the Liberal leadership following Grande's resignation.

She became the third person after Sveinung Rotevatn and Abid Raja to announce their run for the leadership.

She told reporters that she had sought advice from Grande herself and did not exclude seeking advice from her if she became leader.

On 23 August, she was unanimously designated leader of the Liberal Party by the party's election committee, with Sveinung Rotevatn and Abid Raja as first and second deputy leaders.

At the party conference in September, she was unanimously elected party leader, with Rotevatn and Raja as deputy leaders.