Coding classes in Lower Saxony

Since 2024/25, Informatik has been a compulsory subject in grades 9 and 10 at all general school types in Niedersachsen. Lower Saxony has five school types in the Sekundarstufe I, after four years of Grundschule: Hauptschule, Realschule, Oberschule, Gesamtschule (integrated or cooperative) and Gymnasium. Each offers earlier Informatik in its own way.

Source: Gesellschaft für Informatik, Informatik-Monitor 2026/27, Niedersachsen page, read 2 November 2026. "Possible" means the school may offer it; it does not mean every school does.

The mentors are based in India. The standard is the same wherever the learner sits: the same mentor every week, the pupil at the controls, and every answer reasoned out rather than copied, whether from a worked solution or from an AI tool.

import csv

streets = {}
with open("strassen_2026.tsv", encoding="utf-8") as src:
    for row in csv.DictReader(src, delimiter="\t"):
        if row["STRNR"]:
            streets[row["STRNR"]] = row["STRASSENNAME"].strip()

print("Streets:", len(streets))
print("Containing 'weg':", sum("weg" in n.lower() for n in streets.values()))

names = list(streets.values())
ends = [n for n in names if n.lower().endswith("weg")]
inside = [n for n in names if "weg" in n.lower() and not n.lower().endswith("weg")]

print("Ending in 'weg':", len(ends))
print("False matches:", len(inside), inside[:4])

Seventeen streets contain the letters without being a Weg. Diesterwegstraße is a street named after a person; August-Holweg-Platz is a square; Am Graswege has the old dative ending. None of them is wrong data. The first program simply asked a looser question than the one we meant.

for word in ["straße", "weg", "hof", "kamp", "feld"]:
    anywhere = sum(word in n.lower() for n in names)
    at_end = sum(n.lower().endswith(word) for n in names)
    print(word, anywhere, at_end)

Data: Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Bereich Geoinformation, Straßenverzeichnis, January 2026 edition, CC BY 4.0 (Datenquelle: Landeshauptstadt Hannover), downloaded 3 November 2026. One name per street key; all counts are ours.

"feld" is the striking row: only 28 of the 96 names that contain it end with it. Many of the other 68 are a -straße or a -weg with a field name in front, such as Lerchenfeldstraße or Klaterfeldweg, and a good number use the old form -felde, as in Im Roggenfelde. A pupil who reports 96 fields has counted something real, just not fields.

1. Grades 5 and 6, no computer. Write ten street names from your own town. Sort them by their last word or ending. Which endings could fool someone who only looks for letters?
2. Grades 7 and 8, Python. Run Version 1 and Version 2, then print all seventeen false matches and sort them into groups: person, place, other.
3. Grades 9 and 10. "Straße der Nationen" contains "straße" but does not end with it. Write a test list of awkward names and check that your function treats each one as you intend.
4. Oberstufe. Rewrite the check as a regular expression that matches "weg" only at the end of a word, and compare its count with Version 2.

Under the Einheitenzeitgesetz Germany runs on MEZ, one hour ahead of UTC, in winter and MESZ, two hours ahead, in summer. The clocks changed back on 25 October 2026 and move forward on 28 March 2027; India, at UTC+5:30 with no clock change, is therefore four and a half hours ahead now and three and a half in summer.