Danish public-school teachers have opened their email inboxes to DR, showing the daily requests from parents for special arrangements for their own children. The teachers say the volume of requests is now cutting into teaching.
Several folkeskole teachers agreed to let broadcaster DR see the messages they receive from parents. The examples were published on Thursday, September 24, 2026. The requests are known among teachers as særaftaler, or special agreements.
Per DR, the messages include a request that staff remind a pupil to drink 1.5 liters of water, preferably early in the day. Another asks that a child be excused from morning singing and allowed to draw in the classroom instead. Others ask that a child not be seated next to specific named classmates.
Cor Skjønning Christensen, a teacher at a school in Kerteminde, described further examples to DR. He said he had seen pupils permitted to chew gum during lessons, and one who turned a card depending on their mood. He also described a pupil who did an alternative activity whenever the class was drawing.
Up to 20 arrangements in one class
Søren Larsen is a teacher and shop steward at Aalykkeskolen in Kolding. He told DR that he deals with requests for special treatment every single day. According to Larsen, it is not unusual for a single class to have between 10 and 20 special arrangements in place.
Larsen said staff in the teachers’ lounge also discuss the situation as excessive. As stated by him, the arrangements are accommodated partly because of pressure from both parents and the school itself, with an expectation that everyone should be met halfway.
All the teachers DR spoke to stressed that special arrangements are not the problem in themselves. The issue, as they described it, is the number of them. They also said the difficulties do not stem from the inclusion policy in Danish schools, which is often blamed.
Tine Schroll teaches at Torslev Skole in North Jutland. She told DR that some requests concern pupils who are otherwise doing well, including requests not to sit beside a particular classmate. Schroll said special arrangements should be reserved for the few pupils who genuinely have special needs.
Parents’ organization points to the school system
Regitze Spenner Ishøy is chair of the organization Skole og Forældre, which represents parents in the folkeskole. She told DR that the arrangements reflect children who are not thriving within the current framework of the public school. In her view, that framework is what needs to change.
Ishøy acknowledged that the number of arrangements can become too large. As noted by her, they make sense when they help children take part in lessons and learn. They do not, she said, when a teacher spends more time managing the agreements than teaching.
The teachers who spoke to DR work at schools in Kerteminde, Kolding and North Jutland. DR published the material as a look at what teachers are asked to accommodate on a daily basis.
