A draft resolution on this matter will first be discussed by the Working Group on Child Day Care and the Youth Welfare Committee before the City Council votes on the proposal on September 9, 2026.

The Transition Compass is a tool for the transition from daycare to elementary school that is funded by the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Education and was developed jointly by the Institute for Education, Upbringing, and Child Care (IBEB), the State Institute of Education, and practitioners (daycare centers and elementary schools). The central goal is to tailor the start of school to the individual needs of each child. This approach takes into account the perspectives of all stakeholders—children, parents, early childhood educators, and elementary schools. The Transition Compass establishes binding frameworks for collaboration, supports joint dialogue on the child’s development, and provides practical materials and recommendations for daycare centers and elementary schools.

The goal of the Transition Compass is to provide individualized support for children and to actively involve both children and parents in the process. The following uniform quality standards are particularly helpful in this regard:

• documentation through a tripartite dialogue from the perspectives of the child, the parents, the daycare center, and the elementary school, 
• network analyses for the stakeholders involved in the education sector,
• regional transition workshops involving all relevant partners, 
• tools for quality development through dialogue (QID) to strengthen cooperation between daycare centers and elementary schools, 
• a transition calendar for children and parents, 
• an accompanying picture book, 
• FAQ materials on the school entry examination for children, parents, teachers, and early childhood educators. 

"A successful start to school should not be a matter of chance. Every child is considered individually and should thus have the same opportunities to successfully transition to elementary school. The Transition Compass helps provide individualized support for children and their families, brings daycare centers and elementary schools even closer together, and promotes structured collaboration. This is an important contribution to greater equality of opportunity and positive educational trajectories right from the start,” says Jana Schmöller, Head of the Department for Children and Youth.

The state capital of Mainz is already actively participating in the development and testing of the concept. Currently, two municipal daycare centers and several privately operated facilities are taking part in the evaluation together with an elementary school. According to the administration, the experience so far has been consistently positive. Particular emphasis is placed on the greater focus on children’s individual developmental processes, the close involvement of parents, and the improved collaboration between daycare centers and elementary schools.

The administration’s proposal is also based on extensive surveys of how the transition has been managed in Mainz to date. These show that while there is good cooperation between daycare centers and elementary schools in many places, it is often based on informal agreements. At the same time, both daycare centers and elementary schools would like to see more binding cooperation structures and a common, standardized transition plan. In the administration’s view, the Transition Compass addresses these requirements and provides suitable tools for this purpose.

A joint symposium with the Institute for Education, Upbringing, and Child Care (IBEB) is already planned for November 2026. At this event, directors and staff from the city’s daycare centers and elementary schools will learn about the concept and work together to prepare for its implementation. The rollout of the Transition Compass is then scheduled to begin in January 2027, so that the concept can be implemented citywide in municipal facilities by the start of the 2027–2028 daycare year.

With this proposal, the administration aims to structure the transition from daycare to elementary school citywide according to uniform quality standards and to provide all children—regardless of their facility—with comparable opportunities for a successful start to school. Until now, the only citywide program offered by the Child Protection Association—and funded by the City of Mainz—was the “Schulzeit” project in Mainz’s Neustadt district. With the citywide rollout of the Transition Compass, the “Schulzeit” project will be discontinued accordingly. We thank the Child Protection Association for its cooperation, which will continue in many other projects.