Breaks

If you are employed at a grundskole, your working hours must, as far as possible, be planned so that they are in uninterrupted blocks. In principle, there must not be off time in the middle of your working hours during a working day.

Only in exceptional cases can your working hours be planned with off time in the middle of your working day. Examples of such cases include school parties, theatre events, etc. that are not a direct extension of your other working hours.

If you are employed at an efterskole, a special break provision applies. This means that breaks of 30 minutes or more are calculated in your working hours at one-third of the total time. However, this must not amount to more than two hours per day. There is no requirement that you must remain on-call/available to the school during these breaks, and therefore you may leave the school premises. Breaks of under 30 minutes are fully calculated as working hours if you must remain available to the school.

Student breaks

Student breaks in connection with teaching is normally of shorter duration and less than 30 minutes. The working hours agreement states that student breaks are typically used for cleaning up and getting the classroom ready, changing classrooms, photocopying, discussion with colleagues, sending messages to parents, playground monitoring, etc. Therefore, student breaks are part of your standard working hours when you have teaching tasks before and after the break.

Meal breaks

The meal break you take at the school must be calculated in your working hours. The condition for the calculation of this break as working hours is that you are available to the school during the meal break, it must not last more than 29 minutes, and you are at the workplace during the meal break.

However, the right to the paid meal break is not forfeited if the school extends the break to more than 29 minutes, nor if the school notifies you that you do not have to be available/on-call.