A success story began around two decades ago: "LernortLabor" (LeLa) was launched to network school laboratories across Europe. In these practice-orientated extracurricular laboratories, pupils can experience science up close, experiment and make their own discoveries. They are given the opportunity to explore scientific topics beyond their regular lessons, which awakens their enthusiasm for technology and research. Today, LeLa can look back on 20 years of exciting projects, inspiring encounters and countless young talents that have been encouraged by the school labs. What once began as a vision is now a mainstay in the educational landscape: around 500 school labs across Europe are part of the network that builds bridges between schools, science and business. 
At the 20th LeLa annual conference in Oldenburg (March 2025), school labs showed what practical education of tomorrow looks like and the important contribution they make to promoting young talent in the STEM subjects as well as the humanities and social sciences. [Source and more at: LeLa2025]

Prof Timm Wilke and the members of the "Didactics of Chemistry" working group presented the "ChemOL" teaching and learning laboratory at the LeLa annual conference.

ChemOL was launched in 2002 and pursues the following fundamental goals:

1. Pupils should gain their own experience of chemistry in a way that is appropriate for the target group. 
   In the ChemOL programme for primary school classes, particular emphasis is placed on ensuring that the experiments and the associated knowledge meet the requirements of primary school pupils. They learn about scientific working techniques and basic concepts and expand their knowledge in a fun way. As a rule, a class spends a whole morning in the laboratory wearing a lab coat and safety goggles.
   The ChemOL programme for secondary school I/II includes topics from the fields of medicine (such as "bone health", "pharmaceuticals"), nanotechnology ("nanomedicine", "nanomaterials and their use in photocatalysis") and sustainable chemistry ("global environmental problems").
2. ChemOL is part of the curriculum for students on the subject teaching degree programmes at the Carl von Ossietzy University of Oldenburg; students are involved in the supervision and are thus able to gain experience in working with children while experimenting.
3. As part of the ChemOL training courses, teachers are introduced to the basic concepts of the subject, familiarised with suitable experiments for the classroom and shown ways of carrying out ChemOL experiments with a class, thus enabling them to cover parts of science lessons.

ChemOL is supporting the research in the field of chemistry education. You can find more information about the ChemOL teaching and learning laboratory on the following pages: ChemOL
In addition, the Working Group Chemistry in Education  regularly sends out a newsletter with news and dates for student laboratory courses and further training. You can simply subscribe to the newsletter.