Two ten year olds in the same grade can have very different first years of computing in Germany. In Nordrhein-Westfalen every fifth grader now has Informatik on the timetable; in Hessen no school type has to teach it at all. This page sets out, Land by Land, when school computing begins, what a child of 6 to 12 can learn before that, what our lessons in English are like, and a first data project that sorts the sixteen Länder three different ways.
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In short
Modern Age Coders teaches coding to children aged 6 to 12 all over Germany, live on video and in English: our Coding for Kids course starts with Scratch, moves on to typed Python, and ends with small projects on real data. A mentor stays with your child and adapts to their speed and accent. You pick a class of fifteen to twenty children or private lessons, in a German afternoon or at the weekend. Most Länder only begin school computing at grade 5 or later.
Where to begin
Three courses for children aged 6 to 12 in Germany
A long course that grows with the child from first blocks to apps, a short Scratch course to test the water, and a Python course for children who are ready to type.
At what age do children in Germany start computing at school?
It depends on the Land, and the gap is wide. The Gesellschaft für Informatik tracks every Land in its Informatik-Monitor; the table below reads its 2026/27 pages for the first grade in which computing is compulsory.
First compulsory computing lesson in secondary school, by Land, school year 2026/27
Land
First compulsory grade
What the Informatik-Monitor says
Baden-Württemberg
5
Informatik und Medienbildung, from 2025/26, starting in grades 5 and 6 and growing year by year
Bayern
5 or 6
One weekly lesson in grades 5 to 10 at the Mittelschule; at the Gymnasium an Informatik focus in grades 6 and 7
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
5
Informatik und Medienbildung in grades 5 to 10, at least one weekly lesson every year
Nordrhein-Westfalen
5
Informatik in grades 5 and 6 at every general school type
Thüringen
5
Medienbildung und Informatik, now in grades 5, 6 and 7, reaching grade 10 in 2029/30
Sachsen-Anhalt
6
One weekly lesson in grades 6 to 10 at Sekundarschule and Gemeinschaftsschule; elective at the Gymnasium
Hamburg
7
Four compulsory weekly hours across grades 7 to 10 since 2025/26, spread by each school
Saarland
7
Two hours in grades 7 and 8, one in grades 9 and 10, at Gemeinschaftsschule and the nine-year Gymnasium
Sachsen
7
One weekly lesson in grades 7 to 10 at Oberschule and Gymnasium
Schleswig-Holstein
7
Compulsory at every school type from 2024/25, four hours in total across grades 7 to 10
Berlin
7 or 8
The one-hour ITG course; Informatik itself is an elective
Niedersachsen
9
Informatik in grades 9 and 10 at every general school type since 2024/25
Rheinland-Pfalz
5 at 21 schools
Grade 5 at 21 Informatik-Profil-Schulen; compulsory at all schools from 2028/29
Bremen
None yet
No Informatik in Sekundarstufe I; compulsory at all schools from 2027/28
Brandenburg
None
Elective only, for example in grades 9 and 10 at a Gymnasium
Hessen
None
No compulsory Informatik at any school type; an elective from grade 7 at the Gymnasium
Source: the Informatik-Monitor 2026/27 of the Gesellschaft für Informatik, national overview and the sixteen Land pages, read on 2 November 2026. By the Monitor's count, six Länder still have no Informatik that every pupil must take; Hessen, Brandenburg and Bremen are among them. "First compulsory grade" is our reading of each Land page; where it depends on the school type, both are shown.
Grade 5 is about age 10
Children in Germany start school in the year they turn six, with each Land setting a cut-off date that the KMK says must fall between 30 June and 30 September. So grade 5, the earliest start in the table, usually means a child of 10 or 11. In Berlin and Brandenburg, where Grundschule runs to grade 6, the first compulsory computing comes later still.
For a child of 6 to 9, then, there is no Land in Germany where the timetable guarantees a computing lesson.
Primary school is next
The KMK published a key-points paper in 2024, "zur Verankerung von Medienbildung und informatischer Bildung in der Grundschule": on anchoring media education and informatics education in primary school. That is a direction of travel, not a lesson your child has this year.
Until it arrives, a curious seven year old in Germany learns to code at home, in a club, or in a class like ours.
This matters less as a race and more as a head start. A child who has spent a year or two putting steps in order, repeating them and fixing mistakes arrives at grade 5 or grade 7 with the habit that school Informatik is trying to build. Our Informatik Companion course then follows the school subject itself, in English, from grade 5.
Taught in English
Can a child in Germany learn to code in English?
Yes, and most do it more easily than their parents expect. Every class is live and in English only; the mentor fits the English to the child.
Live, never recorded
Your child joins a real lesson with a real mentor, on video, and builds while the mentor watches and helps. Nothing is a pre-recorded course the child must push through alone.
English that fits the child
Mentors slow down for a six year old, use short words, show before they tell, and repeat in a new way when a child looks lost. They also get used to each child's accent, and a child who answers half in German is understood and given the English word.
The code does not change
Scratch blocks look the same in every classroom, and Python's words, such as print, if and for, are English already. A child in Germany who learns them in English is learning them in their real form.
The mentors work from India and every lesson is in English; there is no German-language option, and we say so before you book. For families at a bilingual or international school this is simply the classroom language. For a child at a German Grundschule it is a second gain on top of the coding: an hour of English spoken for a purpose, about something the child chose to build.
A first data project
Which Land is the biggest? It depends what you sort by
Ask a class of ten year olds in Germany which Land is the biggest and you will hear Bayern and Nordrhein-Westfalen. Both are right, and that is the lesson: a computer sorts by exactly the thing you tell it to.
The data
The Statistisches Bundesamt, Destatis, publishes a small workbook listing every Land with its area in square kilometres and its population on 31 December 2024, counted on the basis of the 2022 census. Its licence line allows reproduction with the source named.
We copy the sixteen rows into a file called laender.csv with three columns: land, km2 and people. Sixteen rows is small enough to check by hand, which is the point.
The question
Which Land is the biggest, and which the smallest? The program answers twice, once by area and once by people, using the same list and one small function for each way of measuring.
Then it invents a third measure the children have not met: people per square kilometre. That one gives a winner nobody guesses.
Version 1: one list, two ways to sort itPython
import csv
lands = []
with open("laender.csv", encoding="utf-8") as f:
reader = csv.DictReader(f)
for row in reader:
lands.append([row["land"], float(row["km2"]), int(row["people"])])
def area(land):
return land[1]
def people(land):
return land[2]
print("Biggest by area:", sorted(lands, key=area, reverse=True)[0][0])
print("Biggest by people:", sorted(lands, key=people, reverse=True)[0][0])
print("Smallest by area:", sorted(lands, key=area)[0][0])
print("Smallest by people:", sorted(lands, key=people)[0][0])
It prints: Biggest by area: Bayern, Biggest by people: Nordrhein-Westfalen, Smallest by area: Bremen and Smallest by people: Bremen.
Bayern covers about 70,542 km2 and Nordrhein-Westfalen about 34,113, yet Nordrhein-Westfalen has more people: 18,034,454 against 13,248,928. So "biggest" was never one question. It was two, and the program needed to be told which. Bremen is smallest both ways, the one easy answer.
Version 2: invent a new measure, then sort by itPython
for land in lands:
land.append(round(land[2] / land[1]))
def crowding(land):
return land[3]
ranked = sorted(lands, key=crowding, reverse=True)
for land in ranked[:3] + ranked[-2:]:
print(land[0], land[3], "people per km2")
It prints: Berlin 4136 people per km2, Hamburg 2467 people per km2, Bremen 1680 people per km2, Brandenburg 86 people per km2 and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 68 people per km2.
Five Länder, three ways of being big (Destatis figures; the density is our calculation)
Land
Area, km2
People, 31 Dec 2024
People per km2
Bayern
70,541.77
13,248,928
188
Nordrhein-Westfalen
34,112.65
18,034,454
529
Berlin
891.12
3,685,265
4,136
Bremen
419.61
704,881
1,680
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
23,294.83
1,573,597
68
Data: Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis), Gemeindeverzeichnis-Informationssystem GV-ISys, Bundesländer mit Hauptstädten nach Fläche, Bevölkerung und Bevölkerungsdichte, Gebietsstand 31.12.2024, published September 2025, reproduced with the source named as its licence line allows. Population on the Zensus 2022 basis. Densities are our own, rounded to whole people.
The last step is the one we care about most. The workbook has its own column of people per square kilometre, so the children compare. All sixteen of our rounded answers match the Destatis column, 16 of 16. A program that agrees with a trusted published number has earned some trust; one that disagrees has found either a mistake in the code or a question worth asking.
Ages 6 to 7, no screen. Cut out sixteen cards, one per Land, with a dot sticker for every million people. Line them up by dots. Now line them up by how big the shape is on a map. Did the order change?
Ages 8 to 9, Scratch. Put the populations in a list and write a script that walks through it, keeping the largest so far. Then change one block so it keeps the smallest.
Ages 10 to 12, in Python. Type and run the first version, then try the second on your own before you read ours, and check every answer against the Destatis column.
Going further. Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen take the three most crowded places. All three are city-states. Find out what a city-state is, and why that puts them at the top.
Age by age
What should a child in Germany learn first, at 6, 8 and 10?
The right first step depends far more on reading and patience than on the grade. These are the starting points we use, and they move with the child.
At 6 and 7
Short lessons of stories and moving characters, made from coloured Scratch blocks with almost nothing to type. The goal is to put steps in order, notice when something goes wrong, and try again without upset.
At 8 and 9
Real games in Scratch: a score, a timer, a level that gets harder. Children meet variables and conditions without the names first, and finish projects they want to show their family.
At 10 to 12
Typed Python for children who read well: drawings with turtle, small games, and data like the Länder file. This is the age at which most Länder start school Informatik, so the overlap helps.
We do not teach children to copy answers or to paste code from an AI tool. A child who can explain why a loop runs four times, or find the one block that makes a sprite vanish, has learned something that lasts. That is the measure we report to parents, and it is the same in every country we teach in.
Book a free first class. The mentor meets your child, notices how they read and how much English they use, and tries a short puzzle together.
Get a placement. You hear which course and which age group fit, or whether one to one suits better.
Two classes a week. The same mentor each time, building on the last lesson, with short notes for you on what was made.
Move up when ready. A child moves from Scratch to Python when they are ready, not on a fixed date.
Class times
When are classes in German time?
After school and at weekends. Germany is three and a half or four and a half hours behind India, so a German afternoon is an Indian evening, which suits the mentors well.
Three example slots, with the clock on the mentor's desk
Your clock in Germany
Mentor in India, winter
Mentor in India, after 28 March 2027
15:45
20:15
19:15
Saturday 11:00
15:30
14:30
Sunday 10:00
14:30
13:30
The Einheitenzeitgesetz fixes German legal time: MEZ, one hour on top of UTC, and MESZ in summer, two hours on top. German clocks went back on 25 October 2026 and go forward again on 28 March 2027, while Indian clocks never change (UTC+5:30). That leaves a gap of four and a half hours this winter and three and a half from late March. The slots are examples only; no batch is tied to them.
The booking page works in your own time zone and confirms the class in German time. Autumn, Christmas and Easter holidays differ from Land to Land, and classes carry on through them unless you ask to pause.
Milestones
What a child can do at each stage, from 6 to 12
Our own milestones. We use them to place children in the right group and to tell parents, in plain words, what has changed.
Five coding milestones for children (ours)
Step
Usual age
What the child can do
1. Order
6 to 7
Put instructions in the right order and make a character move, talk and stop
2. Repeat
7 to 8
Use a loop instead of copying the same block again and again
3. Decide
8 to 9
Make a game react with if and else, and keep a score in a variable
4. Type
9 to 11
Type small Python programs with a list, a loop and a function of their own
5. Sort and check
10 to 12
Sort real data by a chosen measure and check the result against a published figure
For parents
Stage 5 is the Länder project. The sentence to listen for is "it depends what you sort by", because it shows your child has understood that a question has to be made exact before a computer can answer it.
We report progress as things built and explained, never as minutes on a screen.
For children
If two people both say "biggest" and mean different things, they can both be right. Ask what they are measuring.
When you can check your answer against someone else's, check it. If they differ, find out why.
More courses
Nine more courses for children in Germany
All nine are taught live and in English by a mentor who stays with your child, whether in a class or privately.
I
Thinking and puzzles
Ages 6 to 14
CKI / THINK / 01
Reasoning for young thinkers
Patterns, order and logic for children of 6 to 9, before or beside coding.
A weather forecasting site with live conditions for any location.
by Krish
Fees
Fees for children in Germany
Each month's fee pays for eight live lessons. The euro amounts here follow the European Central Bank reference rate; the charge itself is made in US dollars, and your bank does the last conversion, so its figure can end up slightly higher or lower.
What families wrote on Google, left exactly as they wrote it.
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Student
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Parent of Dhairya
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Parent
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Parent
Parents in Germany ask
Coding classes for kids in Germany: common questions
Are the classes in German?
No. We teach in English, and only in English, live, with mentors who work from India. They keep sentences short, show on screen before they explain, and get used to how each child talks, so a child with school English can follow from the first lesson.
At what age can a child in Germany start?
From 6. Six and seven year olds begin with Scratch, where blocks snap together and little reading is needed. From about 9, children who read comfortably can move to typed Python.
Does school in Germany teach coding?
Later, and it depends on the Land. The Informatik-Monitor 2026/27 shows compulsory computing from grade 5 in Länder such as Nordrhein-Westfalen, Baden-Württemberg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Thüringen, from grade 7 in several others, and not for every pupil in six Länder, including Hessen and Brandenburg.
Is there any computing in Grundschule?
Not as a compulsory subject in any Land at present. The KMK published a key-points paper in 2024 on anchoring informatics education in primary school, but for a child of 6 to 9 in Germany, coding today happens outside the timetable.
When do classes take place in German time?
Weekdays or weekends, flexible: choose your batch, or for a very personalised plan choose 1-on-1 at your convenience, weekend mornings or weekdays. A class at 15:45 in Germany is 20:15 for the mentor in India until 28 March 2027.
Does it matter which Land we live in?
Not for our classes, which are online and the same everywhere. It matters for school, because the year Informatik starts differs by Land, so we place older children with that in mind.
How many children are in a group?
A group class has fifteen to twenty children close in age and one mentor. Families who want private lessons choose one to one instead: two classes a week, just your child and the mentor.
Why is the fee in euro but the payment in dollars?
We show the monthly fee in euro, worked out from the European Central Bank reference rate, so you can compare it easily. The card is charged in US dollars, and your own bank turns that into euro on the day, which is why a statement can be a few cents out. Trying the first class costs nothing.
Will my child just watch videos?
No. Classes are live, and your child does the building while the mentor guides. Children are asked to explain what their code does, not to copy it, and never to paste answers from an AI tool.
What does my child need at home?
A laptop or desktop computer with a keyboard, a stable internet connection, and headphones with a microphone if the room is noisy. Scratch and Python both run free in a browser or on the computer.
Elsewhere on this site
Related pages
Other pages for parents in Germany, from Berlin schools to the right starting age.
All classes are live online and in English, with mentors in India. For a quick answer to any question, message us on WhatsApp.
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A priority demo is a full class of about 45 to 60 minutes. After the class the mentor sends a written skill report and a personal learning roadmap on WhatsApp. If you enrol, the demo fee is adjusted against your first month's fee. Share your demo Order ID with us on WhatsApp and we take it off.
