Eight Danish municipalities did not meet the required staffing ratio in kindergartens in 2025, according to figures published Monday by Statistics Denmark.
The municipalities are Ringsted, Odder, Holstebro, Ikast-Brande, Struer, Brønderslev, Rebild and Thisted.
Under the political requirement, there must be at least one pedagogical staff member for every six children in kindergartens. In 2024, 14 municipalities failed to meet the requirement.
The trade union BUPL, which represents pedagogues working in Danish children’s institutions, noted that more municipalities now meet the requirement than before.
“Staffing ratios have improved, and that is an important first step to ensure the quality in our daycare institutions,” BUPL chairperson Elisa Rimpler said.
“But we are not at the finish line at all when it comes to giving children the quality they are entitled to.”
Since 2024, there has also been a requirement of at least one employee for every three children in nurseries.
Five municipalities failed to meet that requirement last year: Bornholm, Holstebro, Ikast-Brande, Thisted and Rebild.
Rimpler said the figures were not good enough and called on municipalities to increase their efforts.
“There is a need to build on top of this, because in many places the staffing ratios on paper are experienced as very far from reality,” she said.
“Both because managers, long-term sick employees, and pedagogues employed to support individual children are counted, and because many of the extra employees do not have the necessary professional qualifications.”
According to BUPL, the law does not require the employees counted in the staffing ratios to have professional training.
The union said the share of pedagogues among staff was 57% in 2019, compared with 50.6% last year.
Children, Elderly and Housing Minister Jacob Mark of the Socialist People’s Party, SF, said it was serious when municipalities failed to meet the legal requirement.
He said the minimum staffing ratios were working because more nurseries and kindergartens were getting more staff around children and nationwide cuts to staffing had stopped.
“But, as I also see, there are eight municipalities that do not meet the minimum staffing ratios. That is completely unacceptable. I am going to intervene against that,” the minister said.
Mark also criticized the practice of counting managers and long-term sick employees in the staffing figures. He said managers are not with children all the time, while long-term sick employees are not with them at all.
According to Mark, municipalities “just” need to hire more pedagogical staff.
The minister said he will send a letter to the eight municipalities that do not meet the requirements. The same municipalities will also face scrutiny from Ankestyrelsen, Denmark’s public authority for supervising municipalities and other public bodies.
Ankestyrelsen can impose a range of sanctions after assessing why a municipality is not complying with the law, including advisory opinions and fines.
“Now they have had four years. Now they must reach the finish line with those minimum staffing ratios,” Mark said.
