Bilingual School in Berlin, Germany

Platanus Schule Berlin:
Platanus Schule Berlin is a full-time independently-operated bilingual (German / English) educational institution located in the heart of the Berlin-Pankow district in Eastern Germany. comprising a kindergarten, preschool, primary school and secondary school. We provide children and adolescents with all the important skills they need to lead a rich and fulfilling life.

Platanus Schule Berlin offers the following educational programs:

Kindergarten / Preschool Curriculum:
Education in PLATANUS Kindergarten adheres to the 'Berlin Programme for Education, Rearing and Care of Children in Dayschools', issued by the Department for Education, Youth and Sport, for the seven areas of education outlined below:

- Social and Cultural Life
- Body Awareness, Exercise and Health
- Language, Communication and Writing
- First Scientific Experiences
- First Mathematical Experiences
- Early Musical Education
- Arts and Crafts

Primary School Curriculum:
Due to our rare double focus on bilingualism and sciences, we offer our students a challenging and exciting education. From the very first school year on we aim to provide our students with a solid basis for successful future learning in secondary school and at university as well as for their professional careers.

Our curriculum complies with the regulations of the Berlin Education Act and includes the subjects German, English, Mathematics, General Studies (up to Year 4), Natural Sciences (starting in Year 5), Art, Music, Sport/Physical Education as well as our special course ‘Mathematics and Natural Sciences in Practice’ (MaNaP) and the MaNaP compulsory subjects (starting in Year 5). During the six years of primary school, about half of the school curriculum will be taught in English, the other half in German.

Secondary School Curriculum:
According to the special profile of our school, our educational focus is on bilingual education in English and German, as well as on maths and sciences and their application in ecology, environmental technology, business, media and IT, philosophy and psychology. Our teaching methodology is designed to avoid fragmentation into individual subjects and to develop interdisciplinary, lateral thinking and lifelong learning

Bilingual (German / English) Education:
At our school, German and English are given equal weight in the classroom. This means that our students not only learn to express themselves colloquially in both languages, but are also be able to read worksheets, work with textbooks and specialized texts, participate in discussions, give impressive oral presentations, as well as write structured and liguistically accurate essays and assignments in both languages.

We expect most students who enrol in Year 7 at our bilingual secondary school to have German as their mother tongue and to have proficient knowledge of English. A lesser proportion of our students are native English speakers or have grown up in a bilingual household.

In order to introduce German-speaking students to using the English language in class, two courses are taught in English in Year 7. An additional course taught in English will be added each successive year, so that by Year 9 four subjects – i.e. half the school curriculum – will be taught in English. In Years 11 and 12, the proportion of English and German language instruction depends on which courses the students select and the native language of the respective teachers.