Coding classes in North Rhine-Westphalia

After four years of Grundschule, an NRW pupil goes to one of five school types: Hauptschule, Realschule, Sekundarschule, Gesamtschule or Gymnasium. The KMK names the Sekundarschule as NRW's school combining the tracks. All five teach Informatik as a compulsory subject in grades 5 and 6. From grade 7, each school type has its own elective route.

Source: Gesellschaft für Informatik, Informatik-Monitor 2026/27, Nordrhein-Westfalen page, read 2 November 2026. "Elective" means the pupil chooses it from what the school offers.

NRW is big, and so are its numbers. On its NRW page the monitor puts the share of Sekundarstufe II pupils with Informatik at about 14 percent for 2024/25, about 4 percent of Abitur candidates with it as an exam subject, and 2,808 qualified Informatik teachers in 2025/26, around 3 percent of all teachers.

Our mentors work from India and teach over live video. The approach does not change with the city: one mentor who comes to know the pupil, the pupil writing the code, and every step explained in the pupil's own words, never copied from a model answer or an AI tool.

import csv

with open("kurse.csv", encoding="utf-8") as src:
    rows = list(csv.DictReader(src, delimiter=";"))

print("Columns Python found:", list(rows[0].keys()))
informatik = [r for r in rows if r["Fachschluessel"] == "IF"]

Python took the first line of the file as the header, and the first line is not the header. It is the text sep=;, an instruction some spreadsheet programs read to learn that the file uses semicolons. The real header is on line 2. Version 2 reads line 1 on its own, prints it so we can see it, and only then hands the rest of the file to the CSV reader.

import csv

with open("kurse.csv", encoding="utf-8") as src:
    print("Line 1 of the file:", src.readline().strip())
    rows = list(csv.DictReader(src, delimiter=";"))

schools = {r["Schulnummer"] for r in rows}
informatik = [r for r in rows if r["Fachschluessel"] == "IF"]
print("Schools with an Oberstufe in the file:", len(schools))
print("Schools offering Informatik:", len({r["Schulnummer"] for r in informatik}))
print("...with a Leistungskurs in Q1:", sum(r["LKQ1"] == "1" for r in informatik))

for key in ["M", "PH", "IF"]:
    offers = [r for r in rows if r["Fachschluessel"] == key]
    lk = sum(r["LKQ1"] == "1" for r in offers)
    print(key, len(offers), "schools,", lk, "with LK in Q1,", round(100 * lk / len(schools)), "% of all")

Data: Ministerium für Schule und Bildung NRW, Kursangebot in der gymnasialen Oberstufe (Gymnasien/Gesamtschulen) in NRW, Datenlizenz Deutschland Namensnennung 2.0, via Open.NRW, downloaded 3 November 2026. Counts are ours. Courses offered through cooperation between schools may be missing from the file.

So in this file about two Oberstufen in three offer some Informatik course, and about one in nine lists an Informatik Leistungskurs in Q1. For a pupil set on a Leistungskurs, the school's course list matters as much as the pupil's own interest, which is worth knowing before choosing an Oberstufe.

1. Grades 5 and 6, no computer. A worksheet has a title line, then a line of column names, then the answers. A classmate starts reading the answers from line 1. What goes wrong?
2. Grades 7 and 8, Python. Run Version 1 and read the error. Before changing anything, open kurse.csv in a text editor and print its first three lines with Python.
3. Grades 9 and 10. Change Version 3 to compare Informatik with chemistry (CH) and biology (BI). Which subject has the largest gap between "offered" and "Leistungskurs"?
4. Oberstufe. key_fach.csv starts with the same line. Write one function that opens either file, skips a sep= line only if it is there, and returns the rows; then join the subject names onto kurse.csv.

German time follows the Einheitenzeitgesetz: MEZ at UTC+1 in winter, MESZ at UTC+2 in summer. The switch back happened on 25 October 2026; the next switch forward is on 28 March 2027. India stays at UTC+5:30, so the gap is 4 h 30 in winter and 3 h 30 in summer.