Which Berlin Primary School Is Your Address Sent To?
Berlin does not let you choose your primary school. It cuts the city into 394 Einschulungsbereiche, and the boundary your flat sits inside names the Grundschule where you register in the October window. This map draws all 394 areas from the Senate’s own geodata together with the 413 public primary schools standing inside them. Pick your district, pick your area, and it names the school behind the line, then draws a 1.5 km ring showing every other public primary school you could realistically ask for.
Boundaries and school addresses come from the Berlin Geoportal WFS layers schulen_esb and schulen, published by the Senatsverwaltung für Bildung, Jugend und Familie for the 2025/26 school year under Datenlizenz Deutschland Zero 2.0, read on 17 September 2026. Every one of the 385 public Grundschulen and 28 public Gemeinschaftsschulen falls inside exactly one catchment: 356 areas hold one school, 28 hold two or three, and 10 hold none inside the boundary at all. Boundaries are simplified to about 20 metres for drawing. The Bezirksschulamt letter is the binding answer for any single address.
Every October Berlin registers its next class of six year olds, and the first question every family asks is the one the system has already answered: which school. The answer is drawn on a map nobody sends you. The city is divided into 394 Einschulungsbereiche and the one your flat sits in names the Grundschule. This board holds all of them, with every public primary school inside them, so you can see the answer before the letter arrives and judge how much room there is if you want to ask for a different school.
What an Einschulungsbereich actually is
Each Bezirk draws catchment areas around its primary schools and reviews them regularly as pupil numbers move. The area your registered address falls inside determines the school where you must register, and your Bezirksschulamt writes to tell you which one that is. In practice it is normally the nearest public Grundschule, but the boundary decides, not the distance on a map.
What the 394 areas look like when you count them
Measured from the Senate geodata on 17 September 2026, 356 of the 394 areas hold exactly one public primary school inside the line, 28 hold two or three, and 10 hold none at all, so children there cross the boundary to reach their school. The areas are wildly uneven in size: the smallest covers 0.13 square kilometres in Pankow, the largest 27.58 square kilometres in Treptow-Köpenick, and the median is 1.28.
Where a boundary gives you a choice
Berlin runs shared catchments, where more than one school serves a single area and families can say which of them they want. Mitte has eight areas with more than one school inside the line, more than any other district. Marzahn-Hellersdorf is the opposite: 35 areas, 35 schools, one apiece. The map colours every area by which of those three situations you are in.
The 1.5 km ring and what it is for
Asking for a different school is possible, but it is ranked and capped. Under section 55a paragraph 2 of the Berlin Schulgesetz the grounds are siblings and deep personal ties first, then a specific school programme, language or all-day model, then care that is significantly easier because of working hours. Distance is not one of them, and any request only succeeds where that school has room left. The ring shows how many other public primary schools sit within 1.5 kilometres of your area, which is the honest measure of how much field you actually have.
What this map cannot tell you
It shows where school buildings stand inside official boundaries, which is not the same as a legal assignment for one address. A catchment can be shared between schools, a school can serve an area it does not stand in, and boundaries are redrawn as pupil numbers change. Use this to know the landscape before the letter, then let the Bezirksschulamt name the school.
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Berlin School Registration: The School Your Address Already Picked
Berlin registers its next school year from 5 to 16 October, in person, at the one Grundschule the boundary around your flat has already chosen. The post walks the whole October chain: what to bring, the Hort form people forget, how a request for a different school is actually ranked and capped, the deferral that one in eight Berlin first-graders uses, and the language test that carries a 2,500 euro fine.