A Danish homeschooling parent and politicians from Venstre and the Conservatives are calling for national research into how home-taught children fare later in life, as the number of homeschooled children rises.
The call was reported on August 28 by DR, which notes that Denmark has no national measurements of how homeschooled children perform academically afterward. One of those asking for data is Coco Kjærgaard, who teaches her three children at home. She is also a co-founder of the company Rådet for Hjemmeundervisning.
Kjærgaard told DR she would welcome measurements showing who is homeschooled and where those children end up. She said she often faces skeptical questions about whether her children are being prepared for the future. She remains satisfied with her decision, describing teaching arithmetic and writing as a natural extension of teaching children to walk and talk.
According to a survey by the trade magazine Folkeskolen published last year, the number of homeschooled children in Denmark grew from about 400 in the 2015/2016 school year to more than 2,500 in the 2025/26 school year. DR reports the same trend in eight municipalities in southern Jutland, where it obtained new figures. There, the number of homeschooled pupils has tripled in five years, reaching 461 children.
Municipal oversight ends with school
The rise concerns Rasmus Elkjær Larsen of the Conservative People’s Party, who chairs the children and education committee in Aabenraa Municipality. He told DR that the municipality respects parents’ right to homeschool. But when the numbers rise that sharply, he said, it is the council’s responsibility to ask whether the children receive the teaching and academic development they need, something he doubts.
Danish municipalities are responsible for supervising children who are taught at home. That oversight ends when the children leave school age, DR notes, with no follow-up on what happens next. Venstre’s education spokesperson, Anni Matthiesen, said it may be time to examine how the children fare later on.
Matthiesen told DR that Denmark cannot allow itself to turn a blind eye if it does not know how homeschooled children do going forward. She said she will now ask Education Minister Magnus Heunicke of the Social Democrats whether the subject will be studied. No proposal for a specific study has been presented.
DR said it sought comment from Heunicke and from the Social Democrats’ education spokesperson, Matilde Powers. Neither was available for an interview, according to the broadcaster. The pattern of families leaving public school for home instruction has been documented in earlier reporting on why more Danish parents are ditching school.
The photographs published with DR’s report show Kjærgaard’s teaching taking place outside the home. In one, she and her children Isac, 14, and Marley, 12, watch the solar eclipse at Vejle railway station on August 12. Another shows a lesson during a visit to the Den Blå Planet aquarium.
