School fires are causes of concern in many countries. Although most of these fires are minor in terms of heat release rate, the amount of smoke produced can be substantial and cause significant damage beyond the room of origin. Currently, Norwegian schools have a wide spread of different ventilation strategies and systems, and building owners struggle with how to test, maintain and keep them fire safe. A systematic survey of fire incidences and ventilation strategies in schools for three municipalities in Norway was done to gain better insights into fire safety in schools. The results indicated that the place of origin is often in locker rooms/toilets, kitchen, or outdoors, and the fires were usually deliberately set. For non-arson fires, electrical failure was the most common cause. The majority of the fire incidences were small but would often result in smoke damage and spread of soot in the building, leading to high restoration costs for the local municipality. A lack of documentation of the fire safety and the function of the ventilation system was also identified, indicating a need for improved routines and systems for registering fire incidences and documentation of the technical systems. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)