All-day care | Great demands with tight budgets

If the children stay at school until the afternoon, they need a warm meal. Photo: dpa/Martin Schutt All-day care is similar to cafeteria food: hot meals are now part of everyday life at primary schools. Whether the children always like it is another question. All-day care can also vary greatly. Depending on the school, municipality and federal state, the offer ranges from a motivating combination of lessons and leisure time to uninspired supervision.

With the legal right to all-day care for first graders, which came into force this school year, the afternoon offering is to be expanded. From the perspective of the Education and Science Union (GEW), this is an important step. Educational opportunities for children in Germany still depend heavily on their parents. All-day schools could help reduce this dependency and ease the burden on families when it comes to supporting their children. “But we see a significant discrepancy between the claim on paper and the reality of work and life for employees and families on site,” said Doreen Siebernik, deputy chairwoman of the GEW, to “nd”. The start to all-day school with the introduced legal entitlement did not go smoothly.

In fact, in many places there is a lack of suitable rooms for afternoon care or canteens. And not everywhere there are reliable framework conditions for collaboration between different educational professionals. There is also still a shortage of personnel, particularly in the western German states. According to the GEW, employees report an increasing workload. Many are frustrated, says Siebernik, “because they can hardly meet their own professional and pedagogical demands under these conditions.”

There are mainly two different organizational forms for all-day care in schools. In the open all-day school, students can voluntarily take part in afternoon activities, such as work groups or homework help. In tied all-day schools, participation in the all-day school program is mandatory. The teachers organize the school day in such a way that lessons and creative activities as well as phases of concentration and relaxation alternate.

Afternoon care is not always free. According to the federal government's report on the status of all-day care, more than half of the care places used in the 2022/23 school year were chargeable. In 64 percent of the facilities, a fee was charged for care in the afternoon. Whether fees are charged depends on whether it is a school offer or care as part of an after-school care or childcare contract. Parents have to pay contributions for this.

But even with the income from parental contributions, the financing of all-day care is tight in many places. The federal government has created a legal right and is providing a total of 3.5 billion euros for the expansion of the infrastructure by the end of 2029. He then contributes 1.3 billion euros annually to the running costs. However, that is not enough. The federal states, cities and municipalities continue to bear a significant portion of the financing. Municipal associations have been complaining for years that there are not enough resources to implement the legal requirement across the board and with high educational quality.

It is often financially weak municipalities that can no longer maintain an after-school care center or a school store as an extracurricular facility. Instead, new childcare options are being created at schools, which are not necessarily better, but are often cheaper for the municipalities. Parents often incur new fees as a result of the restructuring. In Frankfurt am Main, for example, parents of primary school children have had to pay for childcare in all grades since this school year. This wasn't the case before. The municipality has thus moved a little far away from the long-term political goal of free all-day care.

The GEW also sees difficulties in expanding all-day care - and warns against passing the costs on to municipalities that are already heavily burdened. “The quality of all-day education then threatens to increasingly depend on the respective municipal budget situation,” Siebernik points out. The federal and state governments must therefore ensure long-term financing. “There needs to be a clear commitment to a community of responsibility among all actors,” demands the trade unionist. “Children’s educational opportunities should not depend on the financial strength of their place of residence.”

In North Rhine-Westphalia, lawsuits from 15 municipalities are currently pending before the Düsseldorf Administrative Court. They are resisting the additional expenses for the expansion of all-day care, which, according to their own statements, neither the state nor the federal government reimburses them. The municipalities are demanding a binding regulation on financing. A decision is expected by the end of the year.

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