Teaching in the mother tongue and partner language
Bilingual lessons right from the beginning – a unique model in Germany! The aim of the State Europe School Berlin (SESB) is an integrated education of bilingual learning groups with consistently bilingual instruction. Every bilingual language combination at an SESB location treats the respective first languages equally. Acquiring the partner language involves social experiences and cultural activities. The children get an insight into the cultures of the respective partner language. With their first language, all children retain their cultural and national identity.
A school for everyone
The Public Europe School Berlin is a special offering of Berlin schools. It is an educational policy response to a Europe that is growing together. The concept of this Berlin educational institution is unique in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is not an elite institution for particularly gifted children or the children of diplomats. Equal access to the Europe School Berlin is characteristic: deliberately no school fees are charged. If the demand is greater than the supply, the decision is made by lot and not the parents’ wallet or their influence.
The SESB is a school with a special pedagogical character and is open to all children whose parents want to place the focus of their child’s education on learning two equal instructional languages. In 1992 the SESB started with 160 pupils in six primary schools with three different language combinations: German-English, German-French and German-Russian. Today exist 33 school locations with a total of nine language combinations.
Nine language combinations
This cross-cultural and language-intensive school model is available in nine language combinations. Taught by teachers who are native speakers, the model leads to bilingual qualifications after the 10th, 12th or 13th year:
- German-English
- German-French
- German-Italian
- German-Modern Greek
- German-Polish
- German-Portuguese
- German-Russian
- German-Turkish