Coding classes in Saarland

Informatik-Monitor 2026/27 of the Gesellschaft für Informatik, Saarland entry plus the all-Länder comparison, consulted on 2 November 2026. "Not stated" means the monitor gives no separate figure for that branch and grade. A cross-subject Basiscurriculum "Medienbildung und informatische Bildung" covers grades 1 to 10.

Six hours across four years is a solid base, and it brings a different question for parents: one or two lessons a week are enough to meet the ideas, not always enough to become fluent. A pupil who wants to write real programs, or who aims at the Leistungskurs, gains most from regular practice between school lessons. That is the role of our Companion course.

The monitor's Saarland page also reports that the Gymnasium currently runs eight years, with grade 10 as the Einführungsphase, and is switching back to nine years by 2026/27; at the Gemeinschaftsschule the Oberstufe already runs from grade 11 to 13. It expects the Oberstufe structure and the Informatik curricula for grades 11 to 13 to be revised within about two years.

Our mentors sit in India and teach over live video, to one standard wherever the pupil lives: the same person each week, the pupil typing every line, and answers the pupil can defend, never copied from a solution sheet or produced by an AI tool.

import json
from itertools import combinations

with open("schulen_sl.geojson", encoding="utf-8") as src:
    schools = json.load(src)["features"]

gym = [s for s in schools if s["properties"]["Schulform"] == "Gymnasium"]
print("Schools in the file:", len(schools), "| Gymnasien:", len(gym))

def degrees_km(a, b):
    (lon1, lat1), (lon2, lat2) = a["geometry"]["coordinates"], b["geometry"]["coordinates"]
    return ((lon2 - lon1) ** 2 + (lat2 - lat1) ** 2) ** 0.5 * 111

pair = max(combinations(gym, 2), key=lambda p: degrees_km(*p))
print("Farthest apart (degrees x 111):", round(degrees_km(*pair), 1), "km")

Eighty kilometres across the Saarland sounds odd for a Land that is not much wider than that. Version 2 measures the same pair again, this time with the Ost and Nord columns, which are already in metres, so Pythagoras gives a true distance.

def metres_km(a, b):
    pa, pb = a["properties"], b["properties"]
    return ((pb["Ost"] - pa["Ost"]) ** 2 + (pb["Nord"] - pa["Nord"]) ** 2) ** 0.5 / 1000

print("Same pair, measured in metres:", round(metres_km(*pair), 1), "km")
true_pair = max(combinations(gym, 2), key=lambda p: metres_km(*p))
print("Farthest apart (metres):", round(metres_km(*true_pair), 1), "km")
print("Same pair as before?", set(map(id, pair)) == set(map(id, true_pair)))

The pair is right, a Gymnasium in Merzig and one in Homburg, but Version 1 overstated the distance by about half. The error is not random: almost all of it comes from the east to west part, which Version 1 treated as if a degree of longitude were 111 kilometres long. Version 3 corrects only that, by squeezing the longitude difference by the cosine of the latitude.

from math import cos, radians

def corrected_km(a, b):
    (lon1, lat1), (lon2, lat2) = a["geometry"]["coordinates"], b["geometry"]["coordinates"]
    squeeze = cos(radians((lat1 + lat2) / 2))
    return (((lon2 - lon1) * squeeze) ** 2 + (lat2 - lat1) ** 2) ** 0.5 * 111.2

print("Longitude squeezed by cos(latitude):", round(corrected_km(*true_pair), 1), "km")
print("One degree of longitude here:", round(111.2 * cos(radians(49.4)), 1), "km")

Data: GDI-Saarland, Staatliche_Dienste, feature type Schulen_SL, CC BY 4.0, © GDI-SL 2025, recorded 20 May 2025, downloaded 3 November 2026. Distances are straight lines between the published points, computed by us; they are not travel distances.

1. Grades 5 and 6, with a globe or an orange. Draw lines from the top to the bottom. Measure the gap between two lines at the middle and near the top. What happens to the gap?
2. Python in grades 7 and 8. Try both versions. By how many percent was Version 1 too long? Explain why in one sentence.
3. Grades 9 and 10. Find, for one Gemeinschaftsschule of your choice, the nearest Gymnasium using Version 2's distance. Then try Version 1's. Does the answer change?
4. Oberstufe. Version 3 is still a flat approximation. Write the haversine formula for distance on a sphere and compare all three methods for the farthest pair.

Under the Einheitenzeitgesetz Germany uses MEZ (UTC+1) in winter and MESZ (UTC+2) in summer; clocks went back on 25 October 2026 and spring forward on 28 March 2027. India's clock never changes from UTC+5:30, so the mentor is four and a half hours later now and three and a half from the end of March.