The after-school centre (Swedish: fritidshem) provides educational activities for students aged 6–13 outside school hours — before and after the school day and during holidays. It is a separate school form under the Education Act and is intended to complement compulsory school instruction.
Purpose
The after-school centre aims to stimulate students' development and learning through meaningful leisure, play and creative activities. It also enables parents to work or study. All children aged 6–13 whose parents work or study have the right to a place.
Staff and group size
After-school centres are staffed by after-school pedagogues (now officially called primary school teachers specialising in after-school centres) and childcare workers. Group sizes — measured as children per full-time equivalent staff member — have increased considerably in recent decades and are a recurring issue in the education debate. Skolverket has no national cap on group size, but recommends that each group should not be so large that staff cannot deliver quality educational activities.
Key indicators to compare
On school pages and at municipality level, Skolkoll displays municipality-aggregated key indicators from Kolada:
- Children per full-time equivalent — a measure of staff density (lower = denser staffing).
- Proportion of staff with higher education in pedagogy — the proportion of employees with a pedagogical higher education degree, e.g. a primary teacher degree specialising in after-school centres.
- Cost per enrolled child — the municipality's net cost per child per year.
- Enrolment rate — the proportion of children aged 6–12 enrolled in after-school centres.
These figures are municipality-wide and available on each municipality's page on Skolkoll.