The partner schools of the Mercator Institute for Language Development and German as a Second Language make an important contribution to theory-practice transfer in the field of language education. The continuous exchange between the partner schools and scientists of the Mercator Institute supports application-oriented and practice-oriented research on current and socially relevant issues of language education. In doing so, the Mercator Institute also takes up the interests and challenges of teachers and learners from school practice and ensures that the research results provide concrete benefits for the work in the educational institutions. Based on this, concepts of linguistic education are to be further developed together.

Cooperating schools can receive the status of partner school of the Mercator Institute for the duration of the active cooperation. In concrete terms, this means, among other things:

• The partner schools or individual teachers of the schools actively participate with their learning groups in projects of the Mercator Institute (for example, enabling classroom observations, conducting language-specific diagnostics, testing innovative support measures, participating in surveys, etc.).
• The teachers of the partner schools are given the opportunity to exchange ideas with the scientists of the Mercator Institute about current challenges in teaching. In this way, they participate in the development of questions for research projects that are relevant to their practical work.
• The partner schools regularly receive up-to-date information on events and further training in the field of language education as well as free Mercator Institute publications (digital and analog).
• The partner schools receive a plaque for the school building as well as a digital version of the same, with which they can document their participation in the respective project as well as the partner school network on the school homepage.
• If desired, the partner schools will be mentioned by name on the Mercator Institute website.