From 2025 onwards, all parents with children who attend primary school in Germany will be legally entitled to childcare that lasts until the end of the working day. The cabinet announced this week that a special fund will be created to finance this change to the German school system. 

Full-day care for primary school children in Germany

The federal government is pushing ahead with its expansion of full-day care for primary school children. To achieve this goal, the cabinet has announced that it will set up a special fund - worth around two billion euros - to support the federal states, who are actually responsible for expanding the range of childcare services available. 

When the CDU / CSU and the SPD joined together as a coalition, they agreed that from 2025 there should be a legal entitlement to full-day care for all children of primary school age in Germany. Currently, parents are only entitled to a childcare place from the child’s first birthday to the day they enter primary school. Plenty of schools do offer after-school care, but spaces fill up fast, often forcing parents to reduce their working hours or opt for expensive private childcare.

1 million new full-time school places

According to Family Minister Francesca Giffey (SPD), up to one million additional full-time places need to be created at Germany’s approximately 15.000 primary schools. The timeline for the creation of these places, and when the legal entitlement to primary care will finally be fixed, however, is yet to be decided. 

This year, 733.000 children of primary school age were enrolled in Germany. By far the majority (93,3 percent) were enrolled in state primary schools. Far fewer were enrolled in other types of schools, including special education schools (3,2 percent), integrated comprehensive schools (2,5 percent) and independent Waldorf schools (1,0 percent).