Primary school

With enrolment, a new and exciting stage in life begins for your child and you as a parent, one that you can look forward to. Here you can read about what your child will learn in primary school, how you as parents can participate and what special offerings are available in schools.

Start of school life

In the brochure Start of school life. Things to know about the start of school in 2020 you will find all the important topics and questions about primary school. You can find out about everyday school life, afternoon care or the certificate without grades.

For children born between 1 October 2014 and 30 September 2015, compulsory school attendance begins on 1 August 2021.

For school enrolment, you must register your child in the appropriate primary school between 28 September and 9 October 2020. This is usually the public primary school nearest to your home and will be communicated to you by your district school authority.

You can apply for the postponement of compulsory school attendance for one year if the level of development of your child suggests better support in a daycare centre. If your child was born between 1 October 2015 and 31 March 2016, you can apply for early admission to school when you register. The supervision of schools in your district decides on applications for deferment or early admission.

• You can find all information on registering your child and on earlier or later school enrolment on the Registration page for school beginners

The continuous improvement of the teaching and learning culture is a focus of Berlin’s primary schools. All-day school offerings create time to change educational offerings in terms of content and method and to support all students individually.

Instruction and extracurricular offerings are based on the learning and life needs of the students and are related to one another in terms of content and organisation.

With the reliable half-day primary school and the open or bound all-day primary school, parents have access to school offerings with different conceptual and time-based offerings: parents can choose the all-day model they want for their child.

According to the motto: “Show me how you do it!” the 1st and 2nd school years are age-mixed and the standard form at a Berlin primary school.

This means that most children will stay in the initial phase of school education for two years in order to learn the content according to the framework curriculum and to achieve the goals of the instruction.

More time to study

Any child who needs more time can also stay in the initial phase for a third school year. The third year does not count towards the general compulsory school attendance. The children thereby do not have any disadvantages and are not considered to be repeaters.

Faster learners

Children who may learn faster because of their special talents move up to the 3rd grade after just one year. The advantage of this flexibility works two ways: each child learns at their own pace and does not have to change their entire learning group.

Regardless of whether they study for two or three years during the initial phase of school education, your child will always stay with a few friends and trusted resource persons.

Since 2012 primary school students have received the basic vocabulary booklet to determine what vocabulary each of them is already proficient in.

The booklets “Abend bis zwölf“ (“Evening to twelve”) for grades 1 and 2 and “Arzt bis Zukunft“ (“Doctor to future”) for grades 3 and 4 give students, parents and teachers an orientation on what language learning should be mastered in the various development phases.

In addition to the booklets for the students, there is also a handout for teachers on using the basic vocabulary.

The open design of the day, the so-called rhythmization, has become established in many primary schools. Every school can structure its everyday school life according to its needs. This means that there are various ways to organise the daily routine in the all-day primary school:

• Sliding start
• Teaching blocks instead of 45-minute lessons
• Open final phases
• Active breaks
• Beginning and end of the week

Speaking several languages is an important element in school education and also increases future professional opportunities.

That is why foreign language instruction is started in the 3rd grade in Berlin. Pupils can choose between English or French as their 1st foreign language. Instruction takes place for two hours per week, in some schools even as a voluntary working group in the initial phase of school education. In the 4th – 6th grades there is one hour more of instruction per week.

• Learning languages
• German-Turkish cooperative instruction. Strengthening the Turkish mother tongue and written culture
• Public European School Berlin. Bilingual lessons starting in the 1st grade

Learning tasks (homework) should support and consolidate the learning processes begun during instruction. But they can also serve as preparation for instruction. In general, the exercises for consolidating and applying what has been learned have already been worked on in school.

The schools decide on the scope of the learning tasks in their school conference (committee made up of teachers and parents’ representatives). The learning tasks should help the students to independently practice and consolidate what they have learned and should be able to be solved independently by the students.

Of course parents can help their children, but the children should solve the tasks independently, because if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t learn. The tasks are not educationally justifiable nor permitted as a punishment or disciplinary measure.