The council plans to give the Johannes-Brenz-Gemeinschaftsschule in Hall a completely new room layout. It is based on the educational concept. The city councillors agree. By Tobias Würth (Haller Tagblatt)
In the past, pupils went up the stairs to the classroom and during break 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 planning specialist recently presented it to the building and planning committee and to the town council.
End of the “corridor school”
Long, dark corridors branching off to classrooms on the right and left: the school of the past is now somewhat dismissively called the “corridor school”. What is in fashion now are “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 “Frontal teaching” is considered outdated.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 planning specialists, headteacher Andrea Fürle, as well as parents and pupils are convinced. At the council meeting, almost all of the visitor seats are taken by teachers, who applaud at the end.
Daniel Schönle from the Otto-Seydel-Institut für Schulentwicklung speaks of an intensive but important planning process. Schönle: “The people involved have not made it easy for themselves.” Many discussions, an additional educational 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 foundation for all further steps.
Money was lacking: instead of doing everything at once, the administration and town council once 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 Hagenbachhallen. Only the area of the Gemeinschaftsschule has not yet been changed. This could now be a chance to do it the way the new concept requires.
The wishes could be fulfilled 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.
Outer shell remains
“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.
The supports, outer walls and roofs could stay as they are. “But in between, we are flexible,” says Schönle. Seven “open class landscapes” for six classes each would be created. The formerly large staff room 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.
“I still know the school as a corridor with classrooms along it,” recalls Building Mayor Peter Klink of his own school days at the Schulzentrum West. “But does everyone really stand behind it?” he wants to know with regard to the new concept.
Headteacher Andrea Fürle replies: “Today I can say in good conscience: yes, everyone wants it.” But before it came to that, a difficult process had to be gone through in which the “old way of thinking” was let go. 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.
School building strategist Schönle adds: the Gemeinschaftsschule in the west of Hall will continue to have walls separating the rooms. He says: “There are far more radical solutions, where there are no individual rooms at all.”
Green town councillor Jutta Niemann praises: “It is moving away from a corridor school towards learning landscapes, which is as child-friendly as possible.” CDU spokesperson Frank Walter, who is headteacher of the Breit-Eich primary school, joins in the praise: “The premises should suit the school. We will support this.”
“As the father of a daughter who went through the Gemeinschaftsschule, I say: this is coming too late,” says Michael Reber, FWV spokesperson. The building should have been adapted to the educational concept from the very beginning.
Ruth Striebel (FDP) wants to know whether parents agree too. Fürle: “The parent representatives have been involved regularly.” She had already said earlier: “For the parents and pupils it was initially easier to support the new concept than for us teachers.” SPD spokesperson Lena Baumann also sees mainly advantages: “I think the concept is really great. That is what you wish for your child.”
One has doubts
Only one member sits on the Hall town council who ultimately does not agree to the plans. FWV town councillor Jürgen Gehrke questions the costs. And he says: “I first have to get used to the new concept.” Whether it will even work with the pupils’ teamwork, in which they are relatively free? Gehrke: “I have my doubts about that.”
Until then, though, a few years will still pass. In summer 2026 the draft could be ready, and at the end of 2027 or the beginning of 2028 the conversion work could start, head of the department for building and planning Holger Göttler indicated. Where the pupils will be housed in the meantime, and whether containers would even be necessary, still has to be clarified.
Source: Haller Tagblatt, 7 June 2025
Pupils sit at tables in the Alemannenschule Wutöschingen.
Photo: picture alliance/dpa
