Westfalen Kolleg, Paderborn - Germany

The Westfalen-Kolleg Paderborn was founded in 1964 and is named after Westphalia, the western part of the federal state of North Rhine Westphalia. It is one of three in NRW that are supervised by the state authorities of NRW rather than by the city authorities like grammar schools are.

The purpose of the school is to educate adults who after their final examination (called “Abitur”) can study at any university afterwards.

When the school was founded it was meant to give successful tradesmen and businessmen that did not have the formal school education and examination, the chance to acquire these qualifications. Thus still today, students generally have to be at least 18 years of age at the start. The oldest student I can remember was 42 at his start. A complete course from beginning to end takes 3 years (6 semesters) unless a student fails a semester (or the final examination) and has to repeat it.

At present the WKPB has about 520 students overall and 46 teaching staff.

Similar to grammar schools the WKPB offers different subjects from maths, biology, chemistry as well as physics, history, sociology, geography, English, French, German and Latin to arts and sports. We are proud to offer 17 subjects altogether - some compulsory and others additional - from which the students can choose.

Students in this branch of the WKPB are expected not to have jobs. Lessons start at 7.50 h in the morning from Monday to Friday and end at 18.15 h. However, students do not have to cope with such an amount of teaching every day. During the first two semesters lessons usually end at 13.00 h. Later, students may have a long break in the middle or start late according to the subjects they have chosen.

Apart from these ‘traditional’ courses the WKPB also offers - and don’t you laugh - “Evening Classes in the Morning” (Abendgymnasium am Vormittag). This is a branch of our school that offers lessons like traditional evening schools do (i. e. a smaller range of subjects and a limited choice for the students); but the WKPB offers them from 8.00h to 11.20h in the morning. The participants will have the same qualifications after their final exams at the end of three years. Experience shows that there is a higher proportion of women in this particular branch because mothers can send their own children off to school before they go to school themselves or fetch them from kindergarten after lessons or be home in the afternoon for different reasons.

Additionally, since 2002, the WKPB has offered “Abitur Online” which is a course requiring students to be present in the same classroom with their teachers merely 50% of the time. At present attendance times are on Friday evenings (17.30 h – 21.45 h) and Saturday mornings (8.30 - ~14.00 h). The other 50% of the lessons are spent online. Students have to read texts, watch films, answer questions, work in groups, discuss solutions or difficulties, hand in essays etc. online, and they can do so at their own speed and time.

Occasionally in the evening, they even “assemble” in a virtual classroom to talk to each other and their teacher or to draw/write on a whiteboard. This makes participation easier for those students who do not live in Paderborn, for those who cannot ask for leave from their work every day, but perhaps just one (i. e. Friday) afternoon. It is a great advantage of these classes that not everybody always has to be at the same place at the same time throughout. These courses require great self-discipline on the part of the students, and those who manage to hold out are usually quite successful in the end.

On top of everything else there are, of course, extra-curricular activities.

The WKPB has had a small theatrical company for more than 15 years now: “Das Schwarze Theater” (Black Theatre). Under the guidance of a colleague present-day students and former ones rewrite, adapt and rehearse plays and have performed successfully not only in our school and in Paderborn, but also in Berlin, at Documenta IX as well as Documenta X in Kassel, at Expo 2000 in Hannover and other places in Germany.

Not only have they been awarded prizes, but members of the team also teach other groups (students and pupils) how to perform on stage convincingly.

Moreover, the WKPB is a “European School” and has partner institutions in 25 of the 27 European countries, from Finland to Malta and from Slovakia to Ireland, not to mention next-door neighbours. Teachers and students of these institutions develop ideas for different projects, work on them together at various locations, publish the result and try to spread the acquired nowledge to all the other partners. A recent success has been the project ‘JIP’ (jokes, idioms, proverbs) which showed differences and similarities in our European languages. The resulting drawings on cards (thanks to a Polish artist) and a board game can now be used in teaching languages at different levels in various institutions.

Fuer Kontakt:kokolelebi@aol.com