Kaufmannsschule II, Hagen, Germany

Today we would like to introduce the coordinating school from Germany:

Kaufmannsschule II is a vocational school specialised in economy and adminstration with full-time
and part-time students which make up a total of about 2,000 students. Part-time students are
apprentices in the areas of legal jobs, the retail sector, freight forwarding and office assistants. 

Fulltime students attend the school to acquire a qualification to study (Fachabitur or Abitur). Two
important subject areas in line with the special focus of the school are Business Administration and
IT for business applications. The school also offers subjects of general education like Maths, P.E.
and German while teaching Business English and Spanish as foreign languages. The teachers of the
school support different kinds of projects to facilitate special interests or talents of students, such as
a three-week course in Business English in London for gifted students (they have to earn money for
the fees by working in local companies during the summer holidays), visits to different regional
companies (professional orientation), a student exchange with a Spanish school or an advertising
project in cooperation with the city of Hagen and Europe in Hagen.

We believe that students can acquire valuable competences in taking part in different types of projects that very often cannot be easily measured or assessed as it changes the personality or attitudes of the participants. The school has also taken part in one successful EU-funded project and is active on eTwinning. Kaufmannsschule II runs its own content management system based on moodle which is used for teaching and the school has taken part in eTwinning projects since 2007. Looking at its pupils it is very striking that the school is very multicultural. In the current school year the school has students from these countries: Germany (85.6%), Turkey (7.5%), Italy (2%), Greece (1.6%), Serbia (0.8%), Bosnia (0.8%), Portugal (0.8%), Poland (0.3%), Croatia (0.2%), Russia (0.2%) and Syria (0.2%). Considering that many students have a German passport the migrational background is even larger taking into account that more students have roots in other countries. The class 11bs2 is a case in point: Whereas all pupils are German their parents and grandparents come from 11 different
countries. In this schoolyear the Kaufmannsschule II is teaching two classes of refugees who were
displaced during the current crises. Regarding the religious beliefs among the students are
Protestants (33%), Catholics (29.5%), Muslims (22.1%) and Orthodox (1.7%). The rest is distributed
among others (3.5%) and no religion (10.2%).

The heterogeneous background also applies the stundents' educational backgrounds. As a school of secondary education students decided to attend Kaufmannsschule II having visited other schools before, such as grammar schools, comprehensive schools and other secondary schools.