Police error blocks hundreds of Danish student teachers from internships

Hundreds of student teachers in Denmark cannot begin their internships because a serious error at the Danish National Police is preventing municipalities from obtaining child certificates, DR reports.

Several students were due to replace lecture halls with classrooms this week. Their internships are a significant part of their teacher training.

Oliver Bech, a fourth-year student at Copenhagen University College, was scheduled to spend the next eight weeks at a school in Holte.

“It is frustrating when you have prepared for these many weeks of internship and built up to it throughout the school year,” he said.

About 1,400 students at Copenhagen University College were due to begin internships this week, but the college says several hundred have been prevented from doing so. Nationally, between 2,000 and 3,000 students at university colleges could potentially be affected, according to an estimate by the Organisation for University College Students.

“It is an extremely unfortunate situation,” said Søren Eriksen, resource director at Copenhagen University College. “It is enormously important that they get a good start to their internship, so it is of course a major problem for our students.”

A child certificate is legally required for people who are to work as teachers in primary schools, educators in kindergartens or children’s and youth coaches in sports clubs. Around 340,000 such certificates are obtained across Denmark each year.

Bech is training to become a teacher of Danish, history and physical education, and had been looking forward to the internship.

“It is like a cyclist who cannot take part in a race. This is what we have trained for and what we want to do,” he said.

He fears the delay could affect his education if the problem is not resolved soon.

“If it is postponed for more than a week, it starts to become critical. We need the internship to be approved for our bachelor’s project, because it serves as our empirical material,” he said.

The Danish National Police told DR that it expects the problem to be resolved “within a short time”.

Eriksen hopes a solution is imminent. If the issue is resolved within a few days, he said, it will be unfortunate that students miss some time, but the consequences should be manageable.

The Organisation for University College Students also hopes the problem will be fixed within a few days. Its chairperson, Nanna Thea Mulvad Johansen, said longer-lasting problems could ultimately delay some students’ education.

Students on nursing, physiotherapy, radiography, biomedical laboratory science and occupational therapy programmes could also be affected in the coming weeks if they are due to begin internships requiring child certificates. Social work students could be affected as well if the problems continue, the organisation said.