Full-day care for primary school children: where the federal states currently stand

No primary school child should have to take care of themselves after school when their parents go to work. Promoting the compatibility of family and career is an important goal of the All-Day Childcare Promotion Act (GaFöG). With the law passed in 2021, the federal and state governments want to accelerate the expansion of needs-based education and care services for children of primary school age. The GaFöG provides for a step-by-step introduction of the legal entitlement for children of primary school age from the 2026/2027 school year onwards.

Prognos prepares the report on the expansion of all-day educational and care services for primary school children (GaFöG report) for the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, which is anchored in the GaFöG. This report is submitted to the Bundestag annually.

Overview of the results of the GaFöG reports

GaFöG report 2023

The BMFSFJ published the first GaFöG report on December 6, 2023.

Key results:

• In the 2021/2022 school year, around 1.7 million children of primary school age attended an all-day school program or a day care center for school children (after-school care). This corresponded to around 55 percent of all children of primary school age.
• The education and care services for primary school-age children have been significantly expanded in all federal states in recent years and decades. The result is a diverse range of services.
• In order to be able to provide demand-meeting offers by the school year 2026/2027, taking into account the demographic development, the care wishes of parents and the gradual entry into force of the legal claim, around 393,000 new places must be created nationwide. This applies at least if parental needs do not change in the future. If, on the other hand, parental demand increases, around 545,000 additional places will be needed by 2026/2027. On average, this means around 470,000 additional places
• With a view to the introduction of the legal entitlement, there is a wide range of preparatory measures in the federal states. The financial assistance provided by the federal government has so far mainly contributed to the qualitative expansion of the number of places.
• Experts in the field of all-day education continue to view the staffing, financial and spatial resources of all-day education, further training for staff and parental involvement as critical.
• Cross-state agreements on “guidelines” such as the recommendations of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) of October 12, 2023 can serve as a guide for states and local authorities and help to reduce the differences in the quality of all-day provision.

GaFöG report 2024

The second GaFöG report was published on December 4, 2024.

Key findings:

• In the 2022/2023 school year, approximately 1.8 million children of primary school age attended an all-day school or after-school program. That is 130,000 more children than in the previous year - an above-average increase. In the 2022/2023 school year, a total of around 56 percent of primary school-age children attended all-day school or day care. This represents an increase of one percentage point over the previous year.
• In most federal states, the expansion of all-day education and care services in the past year took place primarily or exclusively in the school sector. In the 2022/2023 school year, 73 percent of all primary schools in Germany were organized on a full-time basis. After-school care services were expanded primarily in the eastern German federal states.
• In order to meet the demand for childcare, at least 271,000 new places (+15 percent) will have to be created nationwide by the 2026/2027 school year. The need for expansion has decreased significantly compared to the first GaFöG report.
• A survey of the responsible bodies in the federal states in May 2024 shows that the majority of the federal states consider the range of all-day places for children of primary school age at that time to (rather) meet demand. Assessments of the coverage of prospective demand for places in the 2026/2027 school year are even more positive.
• Differences between the federal states in the implementation of the investment program for the expansion of all-day care can be seen in the forms of provision funded: a majority of the western German states fund school-based services, while half of the eastern German states prefer to fund cooperation between the school sector and child and youth welfare.
• The majority of the federal states also support the expansion of all-day care with additional state funds.
• The management of the all-day programs rate the interprofessional cooperation with partners and the increasingly flexible and comprehensive care times positively.
• On the other hand, they consider the personnel resources, the qualifications of the staff and the spatial design of the all-day program to be not satisfactory.

Our approach

The expansion of all-day education and care services for children of primary school age is examined on the basis of the KMK's all-day school statistics and the official child and youth welfare statistics. Parental needs are presented on the basis of the childcare study conducted by the German Youth Institute – a nationwide parent survey. The 15th coordinated population projection by the Federal Statistical Office is also used to calculate the number of all-day places that will be needed in the future.

The measures taken by the federal and state governments to prepare for and implement the legal entitlement are presented primarily on the basis of the state-specific funding guidelines and administrative data on the federal investment programs, as well as an online survey of the federal states.

In cooperation with ITES, qualitative questions on the further development of existing all-day programs are answered. To this end, surveys of school principals, parents and children as well as case studies in municipalities are conducted.

Links and Download

GaFöG Report 2023 (BMFSFJ website)

GaFöG Report 2024 (BMFSFJ website)

Webmagazine GaFöG Report 2024

More on our work in this area

Project team: Gwendolyn Huschik, Sören Mohr, Rahel Reemtsma, Dr Anna Marina Schmidt, Dr Dagmar Weßler-Poßberg

Last update: 04.12.2024