Nelson Mandela School is a diverse and inclusive international bilingual state school, teaching from grade 1 to 13. Students in the final year can graduate with either the bilingual Abitur or the International Baccalaureate (IB).
We would like to wish all students, their parents and our colleagues a happy Easter holiday.
We would like to point out that the office will not be manned during the Easter holidays and that emails cannot be answered during the holidays.
We would like to extend a warm invitation to everyone who feels connected to our school: To celebrate the 25th anniversary of our school, we will be holding a big school party on 11 July 2025.
On 20.03.2025, the berlin championship of schools in rapid chess took place for students without club membership. Seven school teams took part in the tournament, which was played in the auditorium of Andreas-Gymnasium.
In 6 tournament rounds, the challenge was to play as successfully as possible in 15 minutes. See picture, from left - Benedikt (11c), Robin (Abi Q4), Tonio (Abi Q4) and Franciszek (11b) once again achieved an exceptional result.
In the exciting, sometimes tricky games, our team scored 11 out of a possible 12 points and won an excellent 1st place ahead of H.-Hertz-Gymnasium and K.-Kollwitz-Gymnasium. Congratulations!
From March 27 to 31, 2025, a 21-member Chinese delegation of art teachers from ten different provinces visited Berlin to get an insight into what cultural education has to offer. A visit to the Nelson Mandela School on March 26 kicked off with a visit to a class in the “Textile Art and Design” profile course (Y9). Afterwards, the profile and concept of the Nelson Mandela School and in particular the interdisciplinary potential of art lessons were presented. The group was then accompanied on a sightseeing tour in Berlin-Mitte. On March 27, we had planned a project day with two artists in Charlottenburg Palace and on the premises of the Community Art School Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf (JKS CW), which was successfully carried out. Afterwards, the delegation visited other museums in Berlin. On March 28, the Chinese art teachers accompanied us to the Neue Nationalgalerie, where a training session on strategies for interpreting pictures was held for them. The Chinese guests were impressed by the curricular possibilities that our school system offers to teachers, and by the wide range of low-cost offers from Berlin's cultural institutions. The Chinese teachers all run private youth art schools that give children and young people in their home country access to art production and individual artistic expression.
Florentine Baumann (Head of the Art Department)
Our students continued their success at the Jugend forscht state competition held at TU Berlin. Tom Smee (IB 12) won first prize in Mathematics/Computer Science for his project “Can synthetically generated training data improve AI object recognition models?” and has qualified for the national finals in Hamburg from May 31 to June 1 – an outstanding achievement!
The two other teams from Nelson Mandela School each achieved a 3rd place in their respective categories – a remarkable accomplishment at the state level:
In addition, the Nelson Mandela School received a special award of 500 euros in recognition of its ongoing commitment to supporting young researchers through Jugend forscht.
Congratulations to all participants, and best of luck to Tom at the national finals in Hamburg!
Reading aloud is fun! Under this motto, the best readers from each of the five German learning groups in Year 7 competed against each other in the P30 Aula on March 26 2025. Following the thematic focus “Andere Welten”, the students had selected suitable passages from Ende's “Die unendliche Geschichte”, Kinney's “Gregs Tagebuch”, Bertram's “Biber undercover”, Carroll's “Alice im Wunderland” and Stevenson's “Die Schatzinsel” and performed them in a rousing manner. Each student then had to spontaneously read an unknown excerpt from Cornelia Funke's novel “Herr der Diebe”, and the students also mastered this challenge with aplomb.
The jury, made up of students from 10c, listened very carefully and paid particular attention to the reading technique, interpretation and choice of text. After the presentations, they briefly withdrew to deliberate and finally presented the eagerly awaited results. Third place went to Johanna (7b) and second place to Aarav (7c). The jury was most impressed by the performance of Adriana (7a), who now has the honor of representing our school at the Berlin UNESCO Schools Competition at the Berlin Wall Memorial in April. Congratulations!
We warmly invite you to the upcoming exhibition featuring artwork of the IB Visual Arts Class of 2025.
The show celebrates the work of our Year 13 IB Artists and has been both created and curated by the students. They have produced an engaging, personal, and dynamic collection of work, incorporating a diverse range of themes, concepts, techniques, and visual media for visitors to enjoy.
An opening event will take place on
Thursday April 3rd 2025
at 4.30 pm in the "Aula" on the third floor of the old building,
Pfalzburger Straße 30
The artwork will stay on display in the Aula until April 11 offering an opportunity for everyone to appreciate the pieces crafted by the IB Visual Art students.
On 17.03.2025, our tournament with the Friedrich-Ebert-Gymnasium, the Marie-Curie-Gymnasium, Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gymnasium and the Martin-Buber-Schule took place as part of the ALBA-School League. The matches were played in the Sports Hall at Steinplatz, Uhlandstr.
The NMS team included, from left - Johannes (Abi Q4), Ivan (IB12), Luka (Abi Q2), Ihor (IB12), Julian, Benjamin (both Abi Q2), Caylen (10e) and Brighton (IB12).
They won all their matches and took first place in the end.
Congratulations!
The concert project WEGE with the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, the Frauenchor der Künste, the Kammerchor der Künste, our NMS-PopChoir accompanied by Elisabeth Baumann and Felix Theuner and pupils from the Luise-Henriette-Gymnasium and the Gemeinschaftsschule auf dem Campus Rütli took place in the Joseph-Joachim Saal at the Universität der Künste (UdK) on March 13 and 14, 2025.
After two intensive days of rehearsals at the UdK with all 150 singers under the direction of Prof. Maike Bühle and Gregor Meyer, we were able to present our songs at a concert on March 14 at 18:00 in front of a full hall. The many different constellations in which we were able to perform our music on stage were particularly enjoyable. In addition to the choir performance, the additional basic music course also worked on three small interventions to the song Apple Tree by Aurora and performed them on stage. In the coming weeks, we will share a recording of the entire concert.
We are already looking forward to the next joint projects and concerts with the UdK.
