Pädagogischer Austauschdienst

Its work is to make possible international encounters, to improve foreign-language teaching in Germany by using young native speakers, to foster the spread of German as a foreign language abroad and to give German teachers opportunities, through exchange programmes, to further educate themselves and to gain experience abroad.

In the beginning in April 1952, the PAD was a branch of the German Academic Exchange Service, but was then linked to the secretariat of the Kultusministerkonferenz in October 1955.

Since 2010, the PAD's headquarters have been housed in a former tram depot built in the Art Nouveau style in 1905 and now converted to office use, in Bonn's constituent community of Bonn-Castell.

[5] Through this programme, which ran from 2014 to 2020, but was extended by seven years in 2021,[6] schools and preschool institutions can finance and organize European exchanges.

On the eTwinning platform, students and their teachers can work together in a protected virtual classroom on educational projects, thus linking Europe's schools and preschool institutions.