The administration wants to give the Johannes-Brenz-Gemeinschaftsschule in Hall a completely new room layout. It is based on the teaching concept. The town councillors agree. By Tobias Würth (Haller Tagblatt)
\n \nBack then, pupils went up the stairs to the classroom and during break they went back down into the yard to kick flattened cola cans back and forth noisily. You have to set aside this principle from your own school days if you want to understand the new concept for the Johannes-Brenz-Gemeinschaftsschule. A specialist planner recently presented it to the Building and Planning Committee and the town council.
\n \nThe end of the “corridor school”
\n \nLong, dark corridors branching off to classrooms on the left and right: the school of the past is now somewhat dismissively called the “corridor school”. The trend now is “partly open learning landscapes”, in which former teachers become “learning companions”. Instead of classrooms, instruction areas are created. There, classes meet to present the results of group work, for example, or to receive input from the teacher. “Frontal teaching” is considered outdated. The specialist planners, headteacher Andrea Fürle, as well as parents and pupils are convinced. Almost all the visitor seats are taken by teachers at the council meeting, who applaud at the end.
\n \nDaniel Schönle from the Otto-Seydel-Institut für Schulentwicklung speaks of an intensive but important planning process. Schönle: “Those involved have not made it easy for themselves.” Many discussions, an additional teaching day and a trip to the Alemannenschule in Wutöschingen near Waldshut, which is considered exemplary, were part of the preparation. This “planning phase zero” is the basis for all further steps.
\n \nThere was a lack of money: instead of doing it all at once, the administration and town council decided to renovate the Schulzentrum West bit by bit. A large part of the grammar school area has already been renewed, and the specialist rooms have also been refurbished. Construction workers are currently tackling two of the three Hagenbach halls. Only the area of the Gemeinschaftsschule has not yet changed. This could now be an opportunity to do it the way the new concept requires.
\n \nThe wishes could be met within the existing 8,000 square metres that the Gemeinschaftsschule already has available in the large building complex. “We do not need a new building,” Schönle concludes.
\n \nThe outer shell remains
\n \n“The pupils are extremely diverse,” says the expert. Learning in a classroom with 25 or more pupils is therefore “not possible”. Through “individual coaching”, digital learning platforms and cooperative learning, the school day would be opened up.
\n \nThe supports, outer walls and roofs could stay as they are. “But we are flexible in between,” says Schönle. Seven “open class landscapes” for six classes each would be created. The former large staffroom would be dissolved in favour of other rooms. This would create “learning offices” or “marketplaces” for group work. Teachers would then have work areas among the pupils and small social rooms to retreat to during breaks.
\n \n“I remember the school as a corridor with classrooms along it,” recalls Mayor for Building Peter Klink of his own school days at the Schulzentrum West. “Does everyone really support it?” he asks regarding the new concept.
\n \nHeadteacher Andrea Fürle replies: “Today I can say in good conscience: yes, everyone wants it.” However, before it came to that, a difficult process had to be gone through in which the “old way of thinking” was set aside. As a sign of full transparency, she offers guided tours of the school. “We are rethinking school,” she says. Classes become “clusters”, and class teachers become teams within a year group.
\n \nSchool building strategist Schönle adds: the Gemeinschaftsschule in the west of Hall will continue to have walls that separate rooms. He says: “There are even more radical solutions, where there are no individual rooms at all.”
\n \nGreen town councillor Jutta Niemann praises: “It moves away from a corridor school towards learning landscapes, which is as child-friendly as possible.” CDU spokesman Frank Walter, who is the headteacher of the Breit-Eich primary school, joins in the praise: “The rooms should suit the school. We will support this.”
\n \n“As the father of a daughter who went through the Gemeinschaftsschule, I say: this comes too late,” says Michael Reber, spokesman for the FWV. The building should have been adapted to the teaching concept from the very beginning.
\n \nRuth Striebel (FDP) wants to know whether the parents agree too. Fürle: “The parent representatives are regularly involved.” She also said earlier: “For parents and pupils it was initially easier to support the new concept than for us teachers.” Lena Baumann, SPD spokeswoman, also sees mainly advantages: “I think the concept is really great. That is what one wishes for one’s child.”
\n \nOne has doubts
\n \nOnly one member of the Haller town council will ultimately not agree to the plans. FWV town councillor Jürgen Gehrke questions the costs. And he says: “I still have to get used to the new concept.” Will it really work with the pupils’ teamwork, in which they are relatively free? Gehrke: “I have my doubts about that.”
\n \nBut until then, a few years will still pass. A draft could be ready in summer 2026, and the conversion work could start at the end of 2027 or the beginning of 2028, says Holger Göttler, head of the building and planning department. Where the pupils will be housed in the meantime, and whether containers will be necessary, still needs to be clarified.
\n \nSource: Haller Tagblatt, 7 June 2025
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Pupils sit at tables at the Alemannenschule Wutöschingen.
\n \nPhoto: picture alliance/dpa
