It Goes on the Report Card: How Berlin's School-Run Radfahrausbildung Actually Works

The Official Rule

Ask three different families where Berlin’s bicycle test comes from and you’ll likely get three different guesses, a police program, a citywide decree, something the Senate invented recently. It’s actually none of those. The whole framework sits inside Berlin’s own primary school regulation, the Grundschulverordnung, specifically Paragraph 13, Verkehrs- und Mobilitaetserziehung, in its current form since 1 August 2017. That single paragraph folds traffic and mobility education into the school’s broader educational mission alongside social education, environmental awareness, and health promotion, rather than treating it as a bolt-on safety course.

Grade 4 is where the paragraph gets specific. The text states that the Radfahrpruefung is carried out in cooperation with the police (in Zusammenarbeit mit der Polizei) and consists of a theoretical part and a practical part. Both, the regulation is explicit, are school events (schulische Veranstaltungen) that remain under the school’s own supervision, which is a genuinely different balance of responsibility than either Bavaria’s decree, where police traffic educators lead the practical units directly, or Hamburg’s arrangement, where police traffic teachers run essentially the whole curriculum. In Berlin, teachers hold the pen. Police involvement is real but framed as cooperation and support, and in practice arrives largely on request and within whatever capacity local officers have that term.

Every student in the grade takes the theory exam, no exceptions carved out in the text. Only a student who passes moves on to the practical ride, and even then only once a parent or guardian has given written consent, a specific, named precondition rather than a general assumption of parental awareness.

Where the practical work actually happens is the school’s own call, not a fixed citywide assignment. According to Landesverkehrswacht Berlin’s own description of the program, a school can choose between three settings: a Jugendverkehrsschule, a scaled-down protected course (Schonraum) built to resemble real streets with signs and markings, its own schoolyard, which is convenient but less realistic, or actual traffic on streets near the school, the most realistic option but the one demanding the most safety planning and parent involvement. Landesverkehrswacht Berlin’s own position is that combining a Jugendverkehrsschule stage with some real-traffic practice serves children better than either alone, though it’s a recommendation, not a rule the regulation itself imposes.

A pass earns a Radfahrschein, issued by the child’s own school, and here Berlin’s text goes further than either Bavaria’s or Hamburg’s published rules: passing the exam, or even passing only the theoretical half on its own, must be noted on the Zeugnis, the child’s actual report card. A student who doesn’t pass may simply repeat the exam, the regulation states this plainly without attaching a waiting period, a fee, or a cap on attempts. None of this carries any weight outside school either way, Germany requires no license to ride a bicycle at any age, so a failed attempt changes nothing about a child’s legal ability to cycle.

Photo by Connor Scott McManus on Pexels

The 25 Jugendverkehrsschulen, and Who Actually Delivers This Day to Day

Berlin’s own Senate education administration describes a network of 25 Jugendverkehrsschulen spread across the city’s boroughs, run as what it calls competence centers for school and out-of-school mobility education. That’s a bigger and more varied footprint than either Bavaria’s or Hamburg’s model: a Senate newsletter on the program put 2025 attendance at more than 335,000 visits, and the figure covers far more than grade 4 exam candidates. The same sites run cycling and scooter exercises for kindergarten-age children, bike and scooter practice across all four primary grades, sessions for Willkommensklassen students aged 13 to 18, adult courses aimed partly at newly arrived residents, and, from summer 2025, e-scooter courses for teenagers.

Individual sites carry their own character. The Senate’s newsletter singled out Reinickendorf’s Jugendverkehrsschule, led by Elke Buchmann, who received the district’s 2025 Fahrrad Berlin engagement award for her work running the site. Other locations named in Senate materials include a rebuilt course at Goerlitzer Park in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, reopened in October 2021, and renovated asphalt tracks at Borkzeile in Spandau. Not every site is permanent: one Jugendverkehrsschule in Schoeneberg closed in 2023 even as the Senate describes the wider network as continuing to develop, a reminder that the current 25-school count is a snapshot rather than a fixed number.

Landesverkehrswacht Berlin plays a support and materials role rather than running the classroom program itself. It’s the city-state’s own chapter within the nationwide Deutsche Verkehrswacht network, an organization founded in Berlin on 3 November 1924 as Auto-Wacht, banned outright under the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945, and refounded on 13 December 1950 as it moved toward its present form, today spanning 16 Landesverkehrswachten nationwide. In Berlin specifically, that translates into publishing the grade 4 curriculum outline schools work from, supporting Jugendverkehrsschule operations, and at times running Senate-funded services such as the pandemic-era catch-up exams for older students who’d missed practical training, described on the association’s own site as a fixed-term arrangement rather than a permanent offer.

What Berlin’s Own Materials Don’t Spell Out, and What ADFC Berlin Is Pushing For

Bavaria’s decree names the blind spot explicitly. Hamburg’s police materials single out a specific two-stage left turn technique. Berlin’s own published curriculum outline, by contrast, groups grade 4 content into four broader areas: recognizing road and path surfaces and safely passing obstacles or parked vehicles, controlled starting and stopping with proper distance and lane position, right-of-way rules, and turning skills covering both hand signals and safe left and right turns. It’s a real curriculum with real content, but nothing in Berlin’s own materials singles out the blind spot by name the way Bavaria’s does, or describes a distinct local left-turn method the way Hamburg’s does. If your child’s teacher covers either topic in more depth, that’s a matter of individual practice rather than something written into the citywide framework, worth knowing rather than assuming either way.

Berlin’s broader child-safety picture comes from a different source entirely: cycling advocacy rather than the school curriculum. ADFC Berlin’s own traffic dossier states that three children are injured in traffic in Berlin every single day, and argues that protecting them requires clear sightlines, physically separated paths, and genuinely low speeds near schools, not just classroom instruction. That figure covers traffic injuries broadly, not bicycles specifically, and a separate widely cited number, roughly 1,890 children involved in school-commute accidents of all kinds in a recent year according to Unfallkasse Berlin, covers falls and other mishaps alongside traffic incidents rather than isolating cyclists. Worth being honest about here: despite real effort to find a Berlin-specific figure isolating child cyclists alone, the clearest available numbers are about children in traffic generally, and ADFC Berlin’s own advocacy treats safer infrastructure, not just a better-taught exam, as the actual lever for reducing those numbers.

1. Grade 3: foundational skills build first. Safe bicycle handling, the shoulder check, and hand signals get practiced at whichever venue the school picks, a Jugendverkehrsschule, the schoolyard, or nearby streets.
2. Grade 4: practice continues and widens. Road and path awareness, controlled starts and stops, right-of-way, and turning skills build on what grade 3 covered.
3. Theory exam: every student sits it. There's no opt-out built into the regulation, all students in the grade take this part.
4. Written parental consent, then the practical ride. Only a student who passed the theory test may continue, and only once a parent's written consent is on file with the school.
5. Passing gets you a Radfahrschein, and a line on the Zeugnis. Even passing only the theory half is recorded on the report card, not just the final combined result.
6. If your child doesn't pass, the regulation allows a repeat. No fixed number of attempts or waiting period is specified; ask the school directly how it handles a retake.

Compliance Note

This page describes the general structure of Berlin’s grade 3-4 bicycle training program as set out in Paragraph 13 of the Grundschulverordnung and in materials published by Berlin’s Senate education administration and Landesverkehrswacht Berlin, current as of mid-2026. It is not legal or educational advice. Individual schools choose their own practice venues and schedules, the Jugendverkehrsschule network can change over time, and any Senate-funded catch-up programs may not run every year. Confirm your child’s specific situation directly with their class teacher or school administration.