In the Berg am Laim elementary school, the cooperative all-day offer has been available since 2019.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
Open cardboard boxes are piled on the windowsill, and a particularly large package was delivered in the morning. Frank Hilgenberg, head of the so-called all-day cooperative at the Berg am Laim primary school, points to the boxes. “We are just unpacking, the children are helping.” On the floor there is an oval made of slotted rails. Locomotives, wagons and model houses are still packed, but will be cleared out in the coming days. It is thanks to the commitment of the educators who work there that the care facility has caught on. You have won a large model railway layout in a competition. One of many projects in the cooperative all-day school of this elementary school.
Cooperative all-day education – this is a model that the city of Munich developed together with the Bavarian Ministry of Social Affairs and Culture. From 2026 onwards, all primary school children in Germany have a legal right to a childcare place after school. In Munich, the all-day cooperative model, or KoGa for short, is intended to ensure this security of care. What is special is the maximum flexibility that the KoGa offers parents – in contrast to, for example, lunchtime care or after-school care. Lunchtime childcare can rarely guarantee childcare until the evening, and there is often no holiday offer. After-school care centers often do not give parents any flexibility in booking times.
All of this is available at KoGa: pick-up times and care days can be booked individually – daily until 6 p.m., even during holidays. Both children in regular classes and children in all-day classes who have lessons until 3:30 p.m. can use the KoGa. This all-day care in schools is either provided by the city itself, but church-based or independent providers are also possible. This school year the KoGa is offered at 20 of 138 primary schools in Munich. An introduction at other locations will be intensively examined and promoted, says Andreas Haas from the Department for Education and Sport.
The KoGa has existed in the Berg am Laim primary school since 2019. The school is an example of how schools deal with the theoretical idea of the KoGa in practice. In 2018 the school got a large new building, a “learning house”, which was to be used both for teaching and for looking after the children in the day care center that was still in existence at the time. The day care center was visited by around 100 schoolchildren at the time. In addition, there was lunchtime childcare in the old school building, which was organized by parents.
Suddenly the number of children had doubled – creativity was required
With the introduction of the KoGa, the day care center was abolished, and lunchtime care followed a year later. There was now a guaranteed childcare place for all children in the six-class school in the KoGa. “Suddenly I had the number of children doubled,” says Hilgenberg. Although there are still two after-school care centers in the vicinity of the school, the number of registrations in the KoGa rose to currently 260 children.
In the coming school year, even 300 children are to be looked after in the KoGa. Because it is important to Hilgenberg that classrooms and group rooms for afternoon care are separated – “Otherwise the children will spend the whole day in the same room!” – he had to get creative. He set up group rooms not only in the learning house, but also in classrooms in the old school building that were not required for lessons. The rooms of the former lunchtime care are now also used by the KoGa.
Hilgenberg leads through the rooms with enthusiasm, you can tell that he is passionate about his job. The KoGa is an opportunity for the children, he says. The guaranteed care place for everyone would also include girls and boys who would not have been entitled to care under the previous conditions, but who urgently need support outside of their home environment. In the so-called Kitafinder, an online forum of the city that centrally controls the allocation of childcare places, parents at schools without KoGa still have to indicate how many hours they have been working. If you are at home or work too little, there is no room for your child.
“The buildings are often there. What is missing are the educators.”
At the Berg am Laim primary school, a number of children from refugee shelters also attend the KoGa. They have lunch with their peers in the large cafeteria, then there is free play, then study time, during which homework is done from Monday to Thursday. “We are close to the children and in close contact with the teachers,” says Hilgenberg. Children who do not speak German very well are encouraged. After doing their homework, the children can play inside or outside.
In the group rooms there is a handicraft table, a building corner, a sofa to cuddle up to and look at books and often even a kitchen. The gym is also popular for playing football or basketball. On Fridays, the children have to do their homework at home, because there should be time for larger projects or trips. For example to the Isar. For eight-year-old Ariadne, the “Isar Party” was one of the most beautiful afternoons at KoGa. “We were allowed to put our feet in the water,” she says. “There was a chair there, and my friend sat on it. That was our Isar king.”
In order to make such projects possible, however, enough staff is required. At the KoGa in Berg am Laim there are not only educators but also some women who are completing training to become a pedagogical supplementary worker in primary schools. This training for lateral entrants is one of several efforts by the city to counteract the shortage of skilled workers and to make all-day entitlement possible for every elementary school child from 2026 onwards. Because, as Bettina Betz from the education authority puts it: “The buildings are often there. What is missing are the educators.”