There is a school in Berlin with an interesting model of teaching. Last weekend I met the principal of the school, Mrs. Margret Rasfeld.

Here bullet points of her concept of teaching:

• No remarks for tests. Students either pass examx or they don’t.
• Students who don’t pass a test, don’t have to repeat the whole test but just the parts they haven’t passed.
• Students don’t write tests, they prepare themselves for certificates.
• Every student can decide when to do a certificate.
• 7th-9th grade students are taught together. No classes.
• There is no teaching in classes. The school has introduced „study offices“ where students learn on their own accompanied by a tutor.
• Each student has his projects (e.g. reading books to children at the kindergarden, cleaning parks, doing sightseeing for tourists etc.

The school is quite succesful with its concept. Students are willing to take responsibility and they are at the same education level like others.

I wished there would be more schools like hers and Germany would re-think the concepts of teaching.