Berlin's eFöB (Hort): Why the After-School Voucher Isn't a Kita-Gutschein Copy

The Official Rule

eFöB stands for ergänzende Förderung und Betreuung, “supplementary support and care,” and it’s the current legal name for what practically everyone in Berlin, officials included, still calls Hort out of habit. It covers care outside actual lesson time for children in grades 1 through 6 (and through grade 10 for students with an intellectual disability or autism spectrum diagnosis): early morning supervision before class starts, afternoon care after the school day ends, and full-day coverage during school holidays.

The care hours themselves depend on which Ganztag model your assigned school runs. Berlin primary schools operate one of two structures, and the eFöB add-on hours differ accordingly.

Your school sets its own exact bell schedule within this framework, so treat the hours above as the general pattern rather than a fixed nationwide timetable.

eFöB vs. Kita-Gutschein: Same Idea, Different Road

If you’ve already been through Berlin’s Kita-Gutschein process, the instinct is to assume Hortgutschein works the same way. It doesn’t, and the differences matter enough to lay out side by side.

The one thing both systems genuinely share is the end result: a Jugendamt-issued needs notice (a Bedarfsbescheid, what people colloquially call the “voucher”) that sets your approved care hours, followed by a signed agreement with whoever actually delivers the care.

What It Costs: Free Through Grade 3, Then Income-Based

Don’t assume Berlin’s “Kita is free” reputation carries straight over to eFöB. It doesn’t, not entirely.

Since 1 August 2023, participation in eFöB has been completely free for every student in grades 1 through 3, with no needs test and no income check at all, under SchulG Section 19. From grade 4 onward, fees return, calculated on a sliding scale based on your household’s taxable gross income from the previous calendar year and the scope of care you book (with or without holiday coverage), with reductions for additional children under 18 in the household and a full waiver for families holding a valid berlinpass-BuT. One thing stays constant across every grade: lunch itself is free for all students in grades 1 to 6, independent of whether their afternoon care is currently billed. The Senate’s notice for the 2027 school start adds that the extra hours (early care, late care and holiday care) are free for children starting school.

Exact income brackets and the euro amounts within them are set out separately in each district’s own SchüFöVO-based fee schedule, so check your Bezirksamt’s Kindertagesbetreuung page for the current table rather than assuming a single citywide figure.

Where Your Child Actually Ends Up After School

This is the part newcomers most often get wrong by assuming eFöB works like Kita-Navigator, where you can search and pick any facility citywide.

A 2005 policy shift moved the large majority of Berlin’s after-school care onto school premises. Before that reform, the city had more than 200 independent Schülerläden, small parent-run after-school clubs operating separately from any school. Today, roughly 30 remain, organized under the DaKS umbrella (Dachverband Berliner Kinder- und Schülerläden), and they’re concentrated at a handful of long-standing partner schools rather than spread across the city. The Reinfelder Schülerladen Verbund, cooperating with Reinfelder-Grundschule, and the inclusive Schülerladen und Hort Blechkuchen are two real examples still operating this way.

For everyone else, eFöB is delivered on your own school’s grounds (or occasionally at a nearby annex), run either by the public school itself or by a freier Träger (a welfare organization or association) contracted to run it there under the school’s oversight, per SchulG Section 19. Whichever Grundschule your address is assigned to, your Einschulungsbereich, is almost always where your child’s afternoon care happens too. There’s no citywide shopping the way Kita-Navigator allows, so the school you register at in October effectively decides your eFöB setup as well.

Timing: How This Overlaps With School Enrollment

If you’ve already worked through Berlin’s October school enrollment window, the eFöB timing will feel familiar, and it’s designed to.

You can submit the eFöB application as early as the same appointment where you register for Einschulung, and most district guidance actively recommends doing exactly that, since the enrollment paperwork is already in front of you. The hard legal minimum is at least three months before care actually starts on 1 August. That gap between “earliest possible” (October, roughly ten months out) and “legal deadline” (spring, roughly three months out) looks like a comfortable buffer on paper.

In practice, districts don’t always trust families to use that buffer well. Neukölln’s original deadline for the 2026/2027 intake was 30 April 2026, then extended to 31 May 2026 after the district found that too few of its incoming first-graders had applied on time, a public reminder aimed squarely at families who’d registered for school back in October and then let the eFöB paperwork slide. Other districts, like Pankow, publish their own fixed spring date rather than leaving families to calculate the generic three-month rule themselves, and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf sets 31 March. One passage of the Berlin family portal even says two months for a first application, while service.berlin.de and the Senate notice say three, so go with your own district’s date. The safest approach is simple: treat the October Einschulung appointment as the moment you finish both forms, not just the school one.

What Parents and the Local Press Report

Berlin publishes no dashboard showing how eFöB works in daily practice, so the clearest picture comes from district notices, local press and the groups that speak for parents and staff. Unions and parties are labelled as such, older items are marked as older, and anything found in only one place is treated as an example, not a pattern. Processing times quoted by the official service pages range from 6 to 8 weeks (service.berlin.de) to up to 12 weeks (Steglitz-Zehlendorf, new school year batch), and the reports below suggest planning with the upper end.

• Backlog in one district, summer 2026 (Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg). In press release no. 241 of 31 July 2026, the Bezirksamt said an increased and delayed flow of applications meant not every application could be finished by the 3 August start. Children whose parents had already filed received the care covered by the legal entitlement from 3 August even without a valid contract, with the contract to be concluded afterwards if necessary. Early care, late care and holiday care stayed unavailable until the matching application was decided, and those applications were to be processed first. This is one district’s transitional rule, so ask your own Jugendamt whether it has a similar one.
• Software changeover, 2025 (older), and its tail. On 2 July 2025 Treptow-Köpenick reported that, during the changeover of the ISBJ voucher software, eFöB Bedarfsbescheide could be issued only partly and with delay. At the time of writing (November 2026), Pankow’s eFöB page still cites ongoing software problems with longer processing times and offers drop-in hours instead of appointment booking, and Steglitz-Zehlendorf’s registration page still says its voucher office can give only limited information and Bescheide while the changeover continues.
• Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf has acknowledged problems at its voucher office. In a Bezirksamt press release of 24 June 2026 (a distributed copy of the official text), the district announced a cooperation with the Investitionsbank Berlin from 1 July 2026 to the end of the year to restructure the Kita and Hort voucher office, with the district’s youth councillor saying the procedure had not run optimally the year before and that existing backlogs were to be cleared step by step. The district’s own registration page says in-person visits for eFöB are not possible because of a tight staffing situation and rising application numbers.
• Quality varies school by school. A Tagesspiegel report of 13 October 2026 says few parents ask about Hort quality before enrolment although children spend much of the day there. A spokesperson of the alliance “Qualität im Ganztag” (welfare associations, parent representatives and unions) told the paper that the plan is one educator per 22 children, but illness, training and leave often make that impossible, and that when rooms are missing, classrooms are used, which gets loud and leaves children no place to retreat. Two parents described very different afternoon care at a Charlottenburg school and a Kreuzberg school. A spokesperson for the Senate education administration said it intends to include the whole Ganztag in school inspections from 2027, though the policy paper still has to be finalised.
• Staffing numbers and the BEB renaming. GEW Berlin (union source, 1 November 2026) reported on a 2 September round table of the alliance, where a calculation showed that improving the staffing key to 1:15 would take 1,960 additional full-time posts and roughly 145 million EUR a year, and that at least 1:20 would be needed to keep existing staff as child numbers fall. The renaming of eFöB to BEB was part of a Senate and GEW package signed on 18 May 2026, reported by Tagesspiegel and taz as meant to put educators on a par with teachers; neither report mentions a change to the 1:22 ratio, and both describe rules on overload notices and sickness cover as still to come. For older context, a taz report of 25 February 2024 cited a Linke-party inquiry showing more than 365 vacant full-time educator posts in Ganztag at the start of 2024, while the Senate’s reply said that, modelled citywide, staffing came out close to 1:15. The ratio has been debated for years: a 2022 SPD state party conference motion called for 20 children per staff member as a first step and 16 later.
• Who runs your school’s afternoon care depends on the district. GEW Berlin (union source, 1 July 2026) reported 321 eFöB areas in public responsibility, 138 schools with a free provider and 56 mixed arrangements, with public structures dominating in Pankow, Reinickendorf, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Treptow-Köpenick, and free providers dominating in Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Spandau and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (the union opposes further outsourcing). Shares differ a little by source and date (Tagesspiegel: 59 percent school staff, 29 percent free provider, 12 percent mixed; Landeselternausschuss, below: 27 percent free providers). On quality, nd reported in May 2025 (older) that parents describe no clear pattern: at some schools care improved after a switch to a free provider, at others problems piled up.
• Parent representatives see the offer as broadly in place, with quality as the open question. The Landeselternausschuss reported on 23 May 2026 that figures presented at its 22 May 2026 session (by a Senate official and a free provider) showed 392 public primary schools in Berlin, the open all-day model at 84 percent of them and free providers running the afternoon care at 27 percent; the report concluded the federal right is already everyday practice in Berlin and that the challenge is keeping afternoons attractive for children after grade 3. In its coalition paper of 20 October 2026 it asks the next government to keep eFöB without a needs test. We found no published Berlin figures on unmet eFöB demand for 2026/27. Tagesschau reported on 1 August 2026 that nationwide not every first-grader has a guaranteed place (the DGB cites about 166,000 missing places), a national figure that says little about Berlin specifically.
• Fees from grade 4 and the missing income proof (older, 2025). The Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district news of 9 May 2025 says the district’s voucher team handles about 7,500 applications a year, that the wave of applications runs from February to October, and that urgent cases such as child protection or a new job are prioritised. In the grades where eFöB is no longer free (grade 4 onward), the fee ranges from 0 to 200 EUR depending on income and hours, and if no income proof is handed in, the maximum rate is applied, something the team says parents repeatedly forget.
• Holiday care depends on your school’s notice. Two 2026 school notices show how much it varies. A Neukölln school (Herman-Nohl-Schule) runs holiday care in its own building or at a partner school, was closed with no replacement care on 21 August 2026 because of the Berlin-wide staff attendance day, and, in justified individual cases, arranges a place at another school in the district for other closed days if requested at least three weeks ahead. A second school (Schule am Märchenviertel) ran its summer 2026 holiday care entirely at a different school and polls parents 3 to 4 weeks before its other holidays. Both tie holiday care to what the family has booked and had approved, so check your school’s own holiday notice early in the school year.

What Changed for 2026/27

Berlin’s Senate announced on 21 August 2026 that eFöB will increasingly be called BEB (Bildung, Erziehung und Betreuung), although many forms and district pages still say eFöB. The same press release says Berlin already meets the federal right to all-day care and names quality as the next focus. It gives no figures on places or waiting lists. Berlin’s model is also wider than the federal right: it reaches grade 6 and covers 6:00 to 18:00 plus holidays, while the federal right covers eight hours a day up to grade 4 as it is phased in. Our guide to the federal right explains how the two fit together.

Step by Step

1. At your October Einschulung appointment, ask for the eFöB form too Most schools hand it out alongside the enrollment paperwork, so complete both the same visit rather than treating eFöB as a separate errand.
2. Gather custody consent and, for grade 4 and up, income proof Both parents with custody rights need to consent (or you need proof of sole custody); from grade 4 onward you'll also need income documentation since fees return.
3. Submit to your home district's Jugendamt, through the school where your district requires it Check your district's own spring deadline rather than relying only on the generic three-month rule, since several districts set a firmer cutoff.
4. Wait for your Bedarfsbescheid Processing runs 6 to 12 weeks depending on the source and district, longest right before a new school year begins.
5. Sign the Betreuungsvertrag before summer holidays start Kita coverage ends automatically on 31 July, and eFöB begins 1 August with no automatic bridge between the two. Steglitz-Zehlendorf asks you to sign within five weeks of the Bescheid.
6. Reapply from grade 4 with fresh income documentation The fee returns at that point with fresh income proof, so don't assume the grade 1 to 3 free ride continues automatically.

Compliance Note

This page explains the general eFöB application process, care models, and fee structure as they stand in 2026, but processing times, district-specific deadlines, and exact fee brackets change and vary by neighborhood. For your specific application, confirm current details directly through your child’s school or your district’s Jugendamt.