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Schools in Denmark to choose how to replace Great Prayer Day holiday

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Schools in Denmark to choose how to replace Great Prayer Day holiday
Danish students will be in school on Great Prayer Day next year... or won't they? (Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix)

Children in Denmark attend school 200 days a year. With Great Prayer Day struck from the calendar after 2023, when will the 'new' holiday to balance the schedule fall?

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It will fall to each municipality to determine when to schedule the new day off, broadcaster DR reports.

Some municipalities have already made that call — Varde, Aabenraa, Holbæk and Frederikshavn have chosen to tack another day to the end of the Christmas holidays, while in Kalundborg municipality they've decided to start Christmas a day earlier. Guldborgsund will start back to school a day later in the fall. 

Others may, anticlimactically, chose to put the new holiday on...Great Prayer Day. "We could, of course, change that and let them go to school on Great Prayer Day and take another day off, but we have not found any reason to do that. We do not think it is necessary," Søro Municipality's head of children and family, Henrik Madsen, said.

READ MORE: Why does Denmark have Great Prayer Day holiday and why is it being abolished?

That 200 day school year isn't technically a maximum, according to the Ministry of Children and Education, so some municipalities could elect to make their school year a day longer. 

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But what are parents to do? DR reports that municipalities must make leisure facilities available to children on whichever weekday the 'new' school holiday falls. 

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