Coding classes in Hesse

Source: Gesellschaft für Informatik, Informatik-Monitor 2026/27, Hessen page and national comparison, read 2 November 2026. The Gymnasium middle years run for five years (grades 5 to 9) or six (grades 5 to 10), or both in parallel.

The monitor's remark about the Einführungsphase is telling: no prior knowledge from the Sekundarstufe I is required. It has to be that way, because for many pupils there was none. A pupil who arrives in grade 10 or 11 already able to program, read data and reason about algorithms starts the Oberstufe course with a real advantage, and that is what our Companion course builds.

The Hessen page gives about 10 percent of Sekundarstufe II pupils taking Informatik in 2024/25 and about 5 percent of Abitur candidates with it as an exam subject. In 2025/26 the Land had 485 qualified Informatik teachers, about 2 percent of its teaching staff.

Our mentors work from India and teach on live video. The standard is identical everywhere: one mentor who follows the pupil from week to week, the pupil writing the code, and reasoning that the pupil can explain, never an answer copied from a solutions page or an AI tool.

import csv

areas = {}
with open("bodenflaeche_2025.tsv", encoding="utf-8") as src:
    for row in csv.reader(src, delimiter="\t"):
        if len(row) > 8 and row[0].isdigit() and row[2].isdigit():
            areas[(row[0], row[1])] = [int(x) for x in row[2:9]]

total, settled, transport, vegetation, farmland, forest, water = areas[("000000", "Land Hessen")]
print("Total area:", total, "ha")
print("Sum of all six columns:", settled + transport + vegetation + farmland + forest + water, "ha")

The program has counted most of the land twice: once as vegetation, and again as farmland or forest. Version 2 follows the header. It adds only the "davon" columns, checks that farmland and forest fit inside vegetation, and then tests every row of the table the same way.

print("Sum of the davon columns:", settled + transport + vegetation + water, "ha")
print("Farmland + forest inside vegetation:", farmland + forest, "of", vegetation, "ha")

gaps = {key[1]: v[1] + v[2] + v[3] + v[6] - v[0] for key, v in areas.items()}
print("Rows off by rounding:", sum(1 for g in gaps.values() if g), "largest gap:", max(abs(g) for g in gaps.values()), "ha")

For the whole Land the "davon" columns add up exactly. In 13 rows they are out by a single hectare, which is what you expect when every column is rounded to whole hectares on its own. That is the right moment to tell pupils a rule statisticians live by: published parts are rounded separately, so they do not always add up to the published total, and nobody should "fix" the total to match.

kreise = {key[1]: v for key, v in areas.items() if key[0][0] in "456" and key[0][1:3] != "00"}
share = {name: v[5] / v[0] * 100 for name, v in kreise.items()}
print("Kreise and kreisfreie Städte:", len(kreise))
for name in sorted(share, key=share.get, reverse=True)[:3]:
    print(name, round(share[name], 1), "% forest")

Data: Hessisches Statistisches Landesamt, Hessische Kreiszahlen, October 2026, Table 38, source given there as the Hessisches Landesamt für Bodenmanagement und Geoinformation, reference date 31 December 2025; downloaded 3 November 2026. Shares, sums and checks are ours. The 26 rows in Version 3 are the Landkreise and kreisfreie Städte, chosen by their area codes.

1. Grades 5 and 6, on paper. A class of 28 has 15 girls and 13 boys; "darunter" 6 play football. Which numbers add up to 28, and why can you not add the 6?
2. Grades 7 and 8, Python. Run Version 1, then find the line in the table header that explains the wrong answer. Write Version 2 before you read ours.
3. Grades 9 and 10. Version 3 ranks by forest share. Rank the same rows by forest area in hectares. Which Kreis moves the most, and why?
4. Oberstufe. Compute the forest share for Frankfurt am Main, Stadt, and for the Land as a whole. Explain in two sentences why the Land figure is not the average of the 26 rows.

The Einheitenzeitgesetz sets German legal time: MEZ (UTC+1) through the winter, MESZ (UTC+2) in summer. Winter time began on 25 October 2026 and summer time starts on 28 March 2027. India does not change its clocks (UTC+5:30), so it is four and a half hours ahead of Hessen in winter, three and a half in summer.