What are public schools allowed to charge for?
Education in Danish public schools must be free of charge, but today there may be charged parental payment for certain voluntary activities and for meals.
General principles
Under the Danish Constitution, all children of compulsory school age have the right to free education in the public schools(folkeskole). It is the responsibility of the municipalities to ensure this.
The necessary teaching materials must also be provided to pupils free of charge. The school may not, for example, require pupils to bring their own computer.
Ordinary equipment such as a pencil case and sportswear is, however, normally the parents' responsibility.
The school may charge parental payment only in a number of specific areas. Some of the most common are:
Excursions and school camps(lejrskoler) are part of the curriculum, and attendance is mandatory. Therefore, the school must pay all costs. However, the municipality can decide that parents must provide a packed lunch or pay for food (or delegate that decision to the school board). For school camps, the school may charge for meals, but only an amount corresponding to the estimated normal saving on food at home – not for the trip itself.
School trips, by contrast, are voluntary. The school may choose to cover the cost, and pupils and parents may also raise voluntary funds to finance the trip. But no individual pupil payment may be charged for taking part, apart from the cost of meals.
For excursions, school camps and school trips alike, the school may not exclude a pupil from participating, even if the parents do not pay for meals.
School meal schemes (madordninger) must be voluntary offers. The municipal council decides whether the scheme is to be free of charge or subject to full or partial parental payment (possibly with an income-dependent subsidy). A national trial with free or partly parent-funded school meals is currently running at selected schools.
Class funds (klassekasser) and other forms of collection may be used to finance costs that the school is not obliged to cover. This could, for instance, be treating pupils to ice cream during a school camp or (co-)financing a school trip. Parental contributions are voluntary and may not be a condition for a pupil taking part in an activity.
The class fund is typically managed not by the school, but by an elected parent representative. According to the ministry's guidance, a class fund and similar collections should be organised so that no pupils or parents feel inferior. It is therefore recommended that parental contributions are given anonymously, or in a way where only the person running the collection knows what each family has contributed.
Parental payment is charged for a place in an after-school care (SFO or fritidshjem) – with the option to apply for full or partial fee relief (depending on household income). At a fritidshjem, parental payment may not exceed 25 percent of operating costs; for an SFO there is no such upper limit.
The SFO is a part of the public school, and therefore user fees may not be charged within the SFO setting for participating in excursions, except potentially for meals.
The school may offer pupils voluntary classes outside school hours, for example in, music, arts or sport. The municipality may decide to what extent payment is to be charged for these classes.
School photos are a voluntary, private service where parents may choose to buy pictures – typically by ordering directly from the photographer. It is therefore not covered by the principle that school must be free of charge.