Our School

Our Mission

Our mission at Volksschule Smart City is to provide a child-centered education  that prepares our learners for a global future. 

 

We aim to provide an education that is:

  • multilingual
  • international
  • and child-centered.
 

Through our International Baccalaureate candidacy and commitment to language immersion, we aim to inspire: 

  • critical thinkers,
  • lifelong learners
  • and responsible global citizens 

in Graz, Austria.

What is the educational concept at VS SmartCity?

At SmartCity Primary School, the classes are organized into three clusters, each of which has grades 1 through 4. The children learn both in their classrooms and also in a shared space. Our school’s open floor plan supports various forms of teaching, not only direct teaching. Behind this concept are ideas that are everything other than new in pedagogy, but have won new favour in the past years through new education goals and key qualifications. A homogenous class, in which all children are taught at the same level and speed, hasn’t existed for a long time.

Principles of inclusion

Where does the difference lie?

The difference between Volksschule SmartCity and a traditional school lies in the arrangement of the classrooms. Each cluster is made up of four classes, one from each grade level, and shares a large, central, open communal space called a “Lernlandschaft” with a large table for experiments and open areas for small and large group work. In addition, there is a team room for the teaching staff, storage space for learning materials and toilets for the pupils. This arrangement around a communal, central space is termed in schools: “Cluster.” Work in this central, communal space is done by pupils of each Cluster and their teachers. The mixed-age groups in a Cluster allow the children to reinforce classroom learning by giving pupils the freedom to further explore topics covered in the classroom. This is all taking place with the intent of meeting the individual needs of each pupil.

Schools today follow the principal of inclusion, which doesn’t only mean the integration of pupils with special needs, but also designing the curriculum as much as possible to meet each child’s needs. The educators integrate their teaching not only with the topics of the lessons but also according to the skills of each pupil.

The location

Given that the SmartCity Primary School is positioned opposite the Helmut-List-Halle and the Science Tower, in the immediate vicinity of BULME and FH Joanneum, making these factors decisive in defining this school as a MINT School.