Nelson Mandela School (State International School Berlin)

The Nelson Mandela School was founded in 2000 by the state government of Berlin. It is a member of UNESCO’s Associated Schools Project, the European Council of International Schools and the International Baccalaureate Organisation. It enrols students from year 1 through years 12/13. At the end of year 10, Nelson Mandela students qualify for the various German lower secondary schoolleaving certificates. Students attending our upper secondary section can either graduate with a bilingual German-English Abitur, which can be completed in two or three years, or the International Baccalaureate Diploma (IB). As a government-funded school, the school does not charge tuition fees. The IB examination fees and other IB-related costs, however, have to be financed by the students’ families.

The school provides quality bilingual education to children from a wide variety of backgrounds. English and German are our school’s official languages, but we do not stop at introducing our students just to German and Anglo-American values and traditions. As a truly international school and a member of UNESCO’s Associated Schools Project Network(ASP), it is our business to acquaint our students with as many different aspects of life on this planet as possible – and to enable them to make a positive difference wherever they go. 

Defining ourselves as a miniature United Nations is a common sense approach at a school whose students come from over 60 different countries. One classroom routinely combines students from countries as far afield as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, Germany, India, Kenya, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the U.S. – to name but a few of the nationalities represented in our student body. The school’s staff is just as diverse. Pedagogues from Australia, Canada, Egypt, Germany, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States teach at the school. Many of them also have a long personal history of expatriate work in other countries all across the globe. Those experiences enrich our teaching even further.