The State International School Seeheim, also called SISS is the international branch of the Schuldorf Bergstraße. It is made up of a primary and a secondary branch as well as a pre-school. The school represents a pilot project in Germany - a public school where the language of instruction is primarily English.[1] The school is a community of people from different parts of the world and has strived to be internationally profound. The school has been architecturally designed to look like an irregular pentagon when viewed from above. This is the only state funded international school in Germany,[2] and one of 3 international schools in Germany that offer the IB Diploma Program. The Primary department is designed to prepare students for the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE).[1]
The SISS Secondary is for students of Y5 and over. The curriculum includes:
Students in the IB program are registered for the following subjects:
Group 1: Studies in language and literature
Group 2: Language acquisition
Group 3: Individuals and societies
Group 4: (Experimental) Sciences
Group 5: Mathematics
Group 6: The arts
Compulsory courses
They must take 3 Higher Level (HL) subjects and 3 Standard Level (SL) subjects.
In 2006 the primary branch (students of grades 1-4) of the school opened. It was followed up by the opening of the secondary branch (students of grades 5-12) in 2010. In 2016 the first batch of students graduated school.[5] The school has been certified of being an international IB school since 7 July 2014.[6]
The school won the Deutschland - Land der Ideen prize in 2007.[7]
The State International School Seeheim has been organizing an event named 'Walkathon' since 2008. The school has raised over 100,000 euros for various charities. Some include:
The school participates in the Jugend Forscht competition each year.
Source: [13]
In 2015 students from SISS were in the National championship for Jugend trainiert für Olympia.
In 2014 a petition was launched by some parents of students studying at SISS. The petition stated due to the parents being unhappy about the sacking of one of the staff members. The petition was launched on Openpetition.com and received support from many of the students at SISS. It contained an accusation at the school's then Headmaster, saying that he allegedly threw a keyboard at a student. The petition resulted in a failure due to the petitioners revoking their statement. Later on, they published an apology saying that "We would like to apologise that we [made the accusation] in the name of all 317 petitioners, which was not a fully true picture. Of the 317 petitioners 5 actually withdrew their support and explicitly disagreed with this approach (others might have silently disagreed)."[14]
Some of the teachers include:[15]