Kolding Gymnasium replaces Wednesdays with flexible study days

Kolding Gymnasium has abandoned its regular teaching schedule every Wednesday, offering students either a flexible day or a day focused on larger activities, DR reports.

The school calls the structure “4 + 1”: four ordinary school days and one alternative Wednesday.

On flex days, students receive assignments in advance. If they complete the work beforehand, they can use the day as they choose, including sleeping late, taking driving lessons or going to the doctor. The assignments correspond to one to three teaching modules.

On focus days, students take part in activities organised by teachers, often involving one or two subjects and allowing them to explore a topic in greater depth.

During the first full focus day, some students attended a Danish-language activity at a cinema bar, where they watched the film Nøjsomheden. Others took part in a Spanish focus day centred on Latin American street food. They prepared herbs, tomatoes and limes, and made a cooking video featuring homemade salsa.

“It feels as if you get a break in the middle of the week, which you can really need,” 18-year-old Andreas Lange said.

Silas Sølbeck Kretschmann, also 18, said it was unusual to go to the cinema on a Wednesday morning.

“We are not used to having to go and watch a film in town on a Wednesday morning,” he said.

Lange said the arrangement was not necessarily an easier way to get through school. Students could choose to stay in bed on a flex day, he said, but they still had a substantial amount of work to complete.

By doing the assignments in advance, sometimes together with classmates, students could decide how to use their Wednesday. Lange said the system was not perfect, but worked considerably better than the old schedule.

Fellow student Lima Sherzad, 18, said she had become tired of attending school from 8am to 3pm every day and studying different subjects in the same way. Varying the schedule made her more willing to participate and helped her learn more, she said.

Kolding Gymnasium tested the new week from around the beginning of the year before introducing it fully after the summer holiday. The structure was developed with input from teachers and students, according to principal Sune Hother Petersen.

Students had asked for more flexibility, more time for in-depth study and teaching that was more varied and connected to real life, he said.

Petersen said the structure could also help students with social anxiety who sometimes found it difficult simply to come to school. He hopes it will lead to happier students and appeal to different learning styles and groups of students.

Both teachers and students were very positive after the trial, Petersen said, while acknowledging that many students would naturally welcome greater freedom.

Spanish teacher Else Steen said focus days allowed her to create a programme that would not have been possible within a normal 90-minute lesson.

She spent more time planning the day than she would have for an ordinary Spanish lesson and had to think creatively about activities that would interest the students. However, the Spanish teachers developed the ideas together, allowing them to reuse the programme with new students next year.