StarS
“StarS – Starting Strong in Primary School” centres on the transition from preschool to primary school. The project develops digital instruments for assessing children’s proficiency levels at the start of Grade 1 and their learning progress until the beginning of Grade 2. The focus is on fundamental competences in language and mathematics, along with aspects of self-regulation and motivation. Furthermore, StarS develops training modules for primary school teachers and establishes criteria for evaluating training materials. StarS is a collaborative project funded by the German federal states and has been ongoing since mid-2024 in close cooperation with the partner institutions Osnabrück University (Prof. Dr Hedwig Gasteiger) and University of Technology Chemnitz (Prof. Dr Michael Krelle).
What is the goal? 🔗
Primarily, StarS aims to give every child the best possible start to learning at school, seeking to reduce the often significant differences in learning conditions among students at the start of school. The methods developed in the project are designed to help primary school teachers identify children who have not yet developed the fundamental competences needed for a successful start to school. The training modules developed in the project are intended to equip teachers with strategies for providing targeted support to these children.
In addition, studies on system monitoring will be conducted as part of StarS. These studies will facilitate a system-level assessment of the transition from early childhood education to primary school, highlighting areas where further action or policy intervention may be needed.
What is the timeline? 🔗
The methods developed for Grade 1 will be made available to the federal states in mid-2027 and can be introduced in primary schools for the first time that autumn. The following year, the federal states will receive the materials developed for Grade 2. Most of the training modules are also scheduled to be completed by 2028. Furthermore, the results of a first system monitoring study are scheduled for release in 2028.
Developed in collaboration with the StarS partner institutions in German and Mathematics subject didactics, IQB-Primar (English: IQB-Primary level) is based on the font “ABeeZee” by Anja Meiners and designed specifically for the initial years of primary schooling (Grades 1 and 2). The letter and number shapes in IQB-Primar are modelled on the print script children first learn when they begin writing instruction in primary school.
Its clean shapes and consistent character widths make the font highly readable, supporting both accessibility and Reading Comprehension.
IQB-Primar features in the StarS assessments and is also provided to schools for everyday classroom use. You can download the font here.
IQB-Primar is free to use, share and adapt, as long as derivatives are renamed and not sold separately.
Details about IQB-Primar:
Creator: Anja Meiners
Source: © 2025 IQB
License: SIL Open Fonts Licence v1.1
Image sources listed in order of appearance on the page, from left to right and top to bottom; attribution in accordance with the guidelines of the copyright holders/image databases.
- @Kzenon via Canva.com