Prize money of 100,000 euros and a Chancellor with tears in his eyes: Germany's best school has officially been in southern Hesse since last week. For school principal Ute Zeller, the fact that the Bertha von Suttner School was able to convince the jury of the German School Prize has nothing to do with glittering short-term projects: “We were not honored for doing anything differently here very quickly. But continuously for 20 years.”
“Bertha” is an integrated comprehensive school in Mörfelden-Walldorf. More than 2,000 children and young people go to school here. Only about 15 percent of them have a high school recommendation - but about two thirds of the remaining students graduate from high school, according to the school.
“No student here is a number”
For the students themselves, it is above all the humanity of the teachers that makes the school so special for them. “They always noticed when something was wrong and came to us,” says school spokesman Adrian Prodanović. The 19-year-old is in the 13th grade and has been at Bertha since the 5th grade. «The student himself is the focus. No student here is a number or any number, but each student is his or her own person, his or her own individual.”
Melissa Hellmann also experienced this when the now 18-year-old moved to comprehensive school a few years ago. At that time she was afraid of not finding a connection. “Then I had a really great teacher. She’s still like our mother to this day,” says the twelfth grader. She could always talk to her. “It just made me realize: Okay, I’m being looked after,” she says. “That’s why she has a big place in my heart.”
Student projects and AI learning aids
The school's motto is “encourage and strengthen”. This also shapes the lessons: in the lower grades, children are taught how to organize themselves through self-directed learning. In middle school, they then implement their own projects, for example on sustainability or urban development. “But you can’t just give the children a project like that if they haven’t learned in a very structured way beforehand: How can we organize our time? How can we work in a group?" says Jan Krug, who heads the teaching development department.
The school has also developed its own “Bertha AI”, which is intended to be a learning companion for children and young people. Its predecessors were AI bots that students could be tested by. They then recommended suitable units for their individual weak points.
However, the human component remains important, for example through co-determination. It is important to regularly obtain and implement feedback from students, emphasizes Krug. In addition to the class teachers, there are home teachers who are supposed to be safe contacts for the children. Challenges faced by individual students are also addressed in small groups - whether it's math or packing the school bag correctly.
A school like a company
According to principal Zeller, the school's success is also due to its structure. “The school basically functions like a company,” she explains. That sounds strange at first, but: “That is the basic prerequisite for us to be able to design a really good product together with our customers - that is, the students - namely education.”
This works through division of tasks and clear structures. For example, there are department heads for teaching development or quality management. In the individual departments, small teams of teachers take care of projects such as promoting gifted students or technological development.
“It’s so strange that people still think about schools in such a short-term way,” says Krug. A clear structure helps ensure that the teams at Bertha plan for the long term and stay on the ball. In addition, the work becomes more efficient, so that the teachers have more time to respond to the children.
