These are the 2023 award-winning schools

The Eichendorffschule in Erlangen is a "gamechanger" for its students, who are literally given a new chance to complete their schooling and start their careers. Almost 400 students between the ages of 11 and 17 go to school here – more than two-thirds with a migration background. "The Eichendorffschule succeeds in doing away with students’ fear of making mistakes and makes learning fun again for students who often only know the feeling of failure from elementary school," says Prof. Dr. Thorsten Bohl, spokesman for the jury of the German School Award and director of the Tübingen School of Education. To achieve this, the school relies, among other things, on self-organized and independent learning. For example, the "Mathematics Room," a digitally supported learning environment in which children in the fifth and sixth grades learn independently, enables many to understand mathematics for the first time. 

"In recent years, the Eichendorff School has established a full-day program with a wide range of artistic, cultural, ecological and technical offerings – an exception in Bavaria," says Bohl, an education researcher. With its pedagogical concept, the school offers a stimulating learning environment that opens up new perspectives for disadvantaged children and young people in particular, Bohl says.

"The more than 100 award-winning schools of the German School Award inspire hope," says Dr. Bernhard Straub, Chief Executive Officer of the Robert Bosch Stiftung. "They are a laboratory of ideas and a source of inspiration for making a school system that is fit for the future. It is true that courage, drive, and creativity alone cannot solve the structural challenges facing our education system. But they are an incentive, if not an obligation, for a joint effort by all those involved in politics, public administration, research, practice, and civil society.”

Since 2006, the Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH and the Heidehof Stiftung have awarded the German School Award. It is the most prestigious, most demanding and most highly endowed award for good schools in Germany. Cooperation partners are ARD and the ZEIT publishing group.

The competition focuses on the quality of teaching and the question of how schools can best shape teaching and learning for their students. All finalists have undergone a rigorous application process over the past few months. The jury experts initially selected 20 schools from 85 applications. Teams of juries visited and evaluated these schools in May and June, nominating 15 for the final round of the German School Award 2023. Since the program began, around 2,500 schools have applied for the award. 

The concepts of the award-winning schools are then evaluated, prepared and circulated among all schools via training courses, publications and online via the German School Portal. This helps broadly reinforce and advance good school practices.