Berlin's eFöB Bedarfsbescheid Covers Every Holiday, Except the Weeks Your Own School Carves Out

The Official Rule: A Ferien Guarantee With a Built-In Exception

Our companion guide on eFöB and the Hortgutschein covers how the Bedarfsbescheid, the Jugendamt-issued needs notice that sets your child’s approved care hours, gets applied for and issued. What that guide doesn’t dig into is one specific line inside the same framework that decides whether your child’s afternoon care actually keeps running once the school holidays start.

Unlike Munich’s Mittagsbetreuung, which carries zero legal obligation to offer any holiday coverage at all, and unlike Hamburg’s GBS, where holiday weeks are a separate paid booking layered on top of free term-time hours, Berlin’s eFöB folds holiday coverage directly into the same Bedarfsbescheid that already covers your child’s day-to-day morning and afternoon care. There’s no separate Ferienwochen booking to make, and no extra fee on top for grades 1 to 3, which stay free year-round as our eFöB guide explains. On paper, that reads like full coverage with no gaps and no extra paperwork.

The exception lives inside that same rule. ganztagsbetreuung.com’s own overview of Berlin’s system states it plainly: “Der im Bedarfsbescheid festgelegte Umfang gilt auch für die Ferien (abzüglich der max. vier Wochen Schließzeit, die das Land regeln kann).” The scope set out in your Bedarfsbescheid does apply to the Ferien too, minus a Schließzeit allowance the Land is permitted to cap at four weeks per year.

That’s a state-level ceiling, not a state-level calendar. Berlin doesn’t publish one citywide list of which four weeks close and when. Instead, it’s each individual school, usually in coordination with whichever freier Träger runs its eFöB, that decides how much of that four-week allowance to actually use, and where in the year to place it. Some schools use almost none of it. Others use most of it, concentrated into one block. There’s no way to guess which kind your own child’s school is without asking it directly.

Two Real Schools, Two Completely Different Calendars

Photo by Jeisson Ortiz on Pexels

Because the four-week allowance is a per-school decision, the clearest way to see what it actually looks like is to compare two real, currently published examples side by side. Neither is presented here as typical, since there’s no such thing as a typical version; they’re included specifically to show how wide the range actually gets.

Sophie-Brahe-Gemeinschaftsschule’s own 2025/26 Ferien- und Betreuungsübersicht, published directly on the school’s site, shows its eFöB closing at its own building, Willi-Sänger-Straße 1, for three straight weeks from 13 to 31 July 2026, with children instead cared for at a different school’s site, the Bouchéschule, internally labeled 09G01, for that entire stretch. The same document adds a detail worth taking seriously if your family plans further ahead: in 2027 the same school closes for its final three weeks instead, meaning the block doesn’t sit at a fixed point on the calendar from one year to the next. Several shorter closures earlier in that same document follow an identical pattern: children move to yet other specific schools, a Sonnenblumenschule building for two days around New Year, a Grundschule am Ginkobaum building for a Brückentag in May and a few more days in December, each named individually with a real address attached. A footnote on the same page names an actual staff contact, Frau Bethge, for anyone who needs care on a day or at a location the plan doesn’t already cover.

Herman-Nohl-Schule’s own closure list, checked directly on the school’s site, tells almost the opposite story. Its in-house Ferienbetreuung runs continuously from 9 July through 20 August 2026, covering essentially the entire Sommerferien at its own building. The closures that do appear on its calendar for the year are single, isolated days rather than a summer block: a Studientag on 10 March, a Brückentag on 15 May, and a staff Präsenztag on 21 August that the school’s own list flags explicitly as closed, with no substitute care possible even as a fallback. A few additional days close around Christmas.

This is exactly why a school that looks generous on paper, keeping its own doors open through nearly the whole summer, can still leave a family with a single day of genuinely zero coverage tucked into spring, while a school that closes its own building for a solid three-week block can still mean every affected family gets real, supervised care, just at an address they need to know about ahead of time.

How to Find Your Own School’s Actual Dates

Neither of the two schools above is your child’s school, and general guidance can’t tell you which pattern yours follows. What both examples do share is where the answer actually lives: a Ferien- und Betreuungsübersicht published directly by the school itself, usually reachable from the same menu section as its general eFöB or Hort information, sometimes as a downloadable PDF, sometimes as a plain on-page list.

A few practical points worth carrying into that search, drawn from how both real examples above present their own information:

• Ask at the start of the school year, not in June. Sophie-Brahe’s own document states that care needs for every Ferien period get collected roughly six weeks ahead of each break through a Ferienzettel (a holiday request slip), not assumed automatically from your Bedarfsbescheid alone.
• A closure at your own building doesn’t automatically mean no care exists. Check specifically whether the school names a relocation site, the way Sophie-Brahe names the Bouchéschule and Sonnenblumenschule for its own closure days, rather than assuming a closed building means a closed system.
• Watch for language that flags zero coverage specifically, the way Herman-Nohl’s own list marks its Präsenztag as offering no substitute care at all. That’s a meaningfully different situation from a relocated closure, and worth raising with your school well before the date arrives.
• Don’t assume the pattern repeats identically next year. Sophie-Brahe’s own notice about its 2027 block moving to a different part of summer is a concrete example of why checking the current document, not last year’s, matters every single year.
• If you can’t find a published version, ask the eFöB-Leitung or your school’s office by name, the way Sophie-Brahe’s own document points parents toward a specific staff contact rather than a generic office line.

Where This Fits Next to Berlin’s Other Two Guides

It’s worth being precise about what this page covers, since two companion guides sit right next to it and it’s easy to blur all three together.

Our eFöB and Hortgutschein guide explains the voucher system itself: how you apply, what it costs by grade, and where care physically happens. It mentions Ferien coverage only in passing, as part of describing what the Bedarfsbescheid covers overall.

Our Ferien-Notbetreuung guide covers a different problem: Berlin’s Kitas can close up to 27 workdays a year under the citywide RV Tag agreement, and what happens, legally, once a Kita-age child’s own provider genuinely can’t arrange substitute care, through the Section 22a Abs. 3 SGB VIII backstop and the same escalation path Berlin already applies to the Kita Rechtsanspruch. That guide’s own FAQ already notes, in passing, that eFöB bundles holiday coverage into the same Bedarfsbescheid and that up to four weeks of it can still be carved out at the school level, exactly the mechanic this page goes deep on.

This page is about neither the application process nor the legal escalation route. It’s about the specific design mechanic sitting between them: how much of that four-week allowance your own child’s specific school actually uses, how you find out its exact dates well in advance, and what genuinely happens on the days it applies, whether that’s supervised care at a different address or, less often, a day flagged with no substitute care at all. If a school-age closure day ever leaves your family with a documented, total gap and no relocation offered, the Notbetreuung guide’s escalation path is the next place to look, though whether Section 22a’s Kita-centered right extends as cleanly to that specific scenario is genuinely less settled than it is for Kita-age children, worth raising with your own school first and your district Jugendamt only if that goes nowhere.

Step by Step

1. Find your own school’s current Ferien- und Betreuungsübersicht, usually under its eFöB or Hort menu section, at the start of the school year rather than waiting until a holiday is close.
2. Mark which specific weeks or days fall inside your school’s own Schließzeit allowance, since the four-week ceiling is a maximum, not what every school actually uses.
3. Check whether a relocation address is named for each closure, and if so, whether you need to register separately for care at that location.
4. Return any Ferienzettel or holiday request form by the date requested, commonly weeks ahead of each break, rather than assuming coverage is automatic.
5. Flag any day explicitly marked with no substitute care at all directly with your school first, well before it arrives, since this is the one scenario worth raising early rather than discovering on the day itself.
6. Re-check the document every school year. As Sophie-Brahe’s own calendar shows for 2027, the exact weeks a school uses can shift from one year to the next.

Compliance Note

This page describes the general eFöB Ferien/Schließzeit mechanism as confirmed by Berlin’s own SchulG framework and by two individual schools’ own published calendars, current as of mid-2026. It is not legal advice, and it does not describe a citywide schedule; every school sets its own version of this allowance, and only your own child’s school, through its eFöB-Leitung or published Ferien- und Betreuungsübersicht, can confirm the dates that actually apply to your family.