BBS History

Planning began in the early 1990s for our school which would root British traditions in Germany’s capital city after the departure of the Allies. Using the building of the former Charlottenburg First School, a British military school in Charlottenburg, the Berlin British School opened its gates in September 1994 with 84 children of 23 nationalities as the first-ever British School in Berlin. Built around the corner of Berlin’s famous Olympic Stadium with the Commonwealth War Cemetery further down the road, the BBS and its location is steeped in Berlin history. 

Although initially only offering pre-school, nursery and primary education, we soon had to extend its educational scope by going into secondary education with the IGCSE, and shortly after, introduced the International Baccalaureate Diploma. This growing pupil population meant that we expanded further into the leafy location of Grunewald. In 1999, we opened our Kindergarten at Havelchaussee, a beautiful woodland site with purpose-built accommodation ideally suited for small children.

In September 2000, the vast campus in the middle of the Grunewald at Am Postfenn welcomed our Secondary School students. In January 2010, with the help of funding from the Berlin Lotto foundation, we were able to build a new building to host a spacious library, further science labs and classrooms.

In 2019, BBS celebrated its 25th anniversary, and since the start of the academic year 2015/16, we have been approved to operate as an bilingual Ersatzschule in the state of Berlin.

Since December 2022 our Primary School has been offically authorised by the Berlin Senat as a 'staatlich anerkannte bilinguale Grundschule' (state recognized bilingual primary school).