The private Sudbury School on Lake Ammersee remains closed. This was decided by the Bavarian Administrative Court in Munich in a judgment published on Thursday. The complaint of the supporting association was also dismissed in the second instance, as a court spokesman announced. The appeal was denied.
The association had complained that the authorities of the “free and democratic” school at Ammersee did not extend the state approval. Only two years after the start, the elementary and middle school had to close again in 2016 – to the complete incomprehension of the operating association, which, on the other hand, first went to the administrative court and then to the administrative court.
In the oral hearing about two weeks ago, the school pedagogy professor Thomas Eberle from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg presented his report on the school concept. The concept does not provide for a curriculum, no exams, no grades, no certificates – and assessments only upon express request. According to the appraiser’s assessment, “it was not to be expected” that the majority of the students taught at the school would acquire the necessary knowledge and skills by the end of the fourth or ninth grade.
During the hearing, the presiding judge indicated that she saw things in a very similar way and emphasized, for example: “Freedom from private schools does not mean absolute freedom.”
Because the appeal to the Federal Administrative Court was not admitted, the supporting association now only has a so-called non-admission complaint against this decision in the fight for a reopening of the school. The Ministry of Education does not know how many applications for approval of a private school are approved or rejected each year in Bavaria, as a spokesman said on request. This is because different bodies are responsible for the approval and there are no overarching statistics.
According to the ministry, there were around 620 general education schools in Bavaria with around 145,000 students from a private school authority, including business schools, in the past school year.