Secret School Discovered
October 18, 2007
Officials in the north German city of Bremen have been left searching for an explanation as to how a 'secret' primary school managed to operate for 30 years and send hundreds of children on to secondary education and beyond without anyone apparently noticing.
After ruling out top secret cloaking devices and the possibility of magic, the authorities are slowly coming to the conclusion that a long line of education ministry officials in the city state have been guilty of incompetence on a major scale.
The school in the district of Steintor, organized by disgruntled leftwing, mainly academic parents, taught several hundred children aged between four and ten right under the noses of the state education ministry for nearly three decades.
Disgruntled parents opted out of state system
In a reaction to the rigid pedagogical practices of the state system, the parents set up the school in an old villa where pupils attended mixed and same-sex classes, combining all age groups, in a relaxed and fun atmosphere.
The kids then went on to high schools in the area with forged education certificates. Many of them excelled, attended university and went on to build successful careers.
Renate Jürgens-Pieper, the Social Democrat education minister for the state of Bremen, attempted to deflect the accusations of incompetence by accusing the parents of deception.
"They have been cheating us for years," she said in a report published by British newspaper The Guardian. As an unregistered institution run by parents, she added, the school failed to abide by basic health and safety standards such as stair rails, separate toilets for pupils and teachers, and fire regulations.
School raided by cops but remained unseen
What is unusual is that the authorities claim not to have been aware of the existence of the unregistered alternative primary school despite it being raided by police on one occasion in the past, suggesting that rather than not knowing it was there, state officials in the past had turned a blind eye to the school.
The school is now set to close and the children will be moved on to established and presumably visible schools in the area while the parents will be fined.