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February 16th, 2015

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As the city's schools continue to struggle with the many reforms introduced at the beginning of the current school year, Copenhagen Municipality has announced it will need to start a streamlining process to save millions.

The municipality will need to save 312.6 million kroner in 2016 – nearly 36 percent of which will need to come out of the children and youth administration.

The administration encompasses public schools, as well as daycare centres, nurseries and after-school centres. Of the 112 million kroner the administration needs to save, 53 million of that will have to come out of public school budgets, unless the other centres and services can take on more of the cuts.

READ MORE: Pupils at Copenhagen public schools suck at mathematics

Quality issues
The savings directive, however, comes at a time when schools have been facing a lot of criticism.

In November a report on the capital's public schools showed there were “massive quality problems”, saying that a “significant proportion of schools were achieving worryingly low results”, reports Politiken.

“In light of the very troubling conclusions in the quality report for schools in Copenhagen, school should be a top priority now,” Tommy Petersen, Radikale's group leader at City Hall, told Politiken.

“We are well below the national average in both Danish and mathematics. It is not the time to ask schools to save money.”

READ MORE: Teachers not so positive about school reforms

Schools should be spared
Jan Trojaberg, the chairman of both Danmarks Lærerforening and Københavns Lærerforening, the country's and capital's teacher unions, agrees that the city's schools need to be exempt from the savings initiative.

“At the moment schools are being bled. One third of the teachers have been replaced and we have an education reform that is underfunded,” he told Politiken.

Petersen's party proposes that the savings should be shared among other administrations.