"There is a need to give primary schools more freedom. The changes cannot take place as long as there is a primary school settlement where individual parties can block giving freedom back to the schools.” This is how SF begins their press release after terminating the school settlement.
The school agreement was introduced in 2013, after a conflict between KL, the government and primary school teachers in Denmark. After this, a school settlement was introduced by the government to ensure rules around teachers' working hours. Now the settlement has been terminated again, and it is going to have a big impact on primary schools around the country.
According to SF, the school agreement has been dropped because the teachers must have more responsibility and not be controlled by the government. There is now an option to make the school days shorter if this makes sense for the individual school, and there will be more focus on well-being among the children.
The individual primary school is released, which is precisely the case in Holbæk and Esbjerg municipalities. Without the school agreement, the individual school head will face additional pressure, as many more tasks will fall on this person. As an extension of this, more demands will be placed on both teachers and school leaders, as they will be given responsibility for the future well-being of the schools. The public school will undeniably also be more expensive to furnish, as many differences will arise. If the economy does not follow suit from the state, many necessary projects will be de-prioritised.
This can e.g. be the indoor climate, which will further be significantly de-prioritised now that the responsibility lies with the individual school.
In ÅBN, we hope and believe that the indoor climate must be improved as a joint effort with a broad financial agreement for all elementary schools.
