DADS TIME
SWISS SCHOOLS: PRIVATE VS PUBLIC
A private decision – a public topic: A private or public school for
my
child?
I have pointed out in past articles that Switzerland is – in many ways – a
rather odd place. Schools are no exception in this respect. Switzerland still
has a deep suspicion of anything centralised. This, I expect, harks from the
historical roots of Switzerland as a federation of deeply distrustful individual
entities (now the Cantons). This shows in the school system, which still varies
to some degree from Canton to Canton, now that a number of Cantons have opted
out of the HARMOS initiative, this is likely to stay that way. So a public school
path in Switzerland will have at least two major implications: They run throughout
Switzerland on the assumption that Mum is a stay-at-home housewife and has plenty
of time to go back and forth from the school to home, bring the kids by nine,
pick 'em up and take them home for lunch, bring them back again afterwards, and
them bring them home at three or four o'clock for homework at home. The second
problem is that school starting times and – in some cases such as the "Sportferien" – the
holiday dates vary not only from Canton to Canton but also from village to village.
So if you have one child in primary school in the village and another in secondary
school in the next-largest town, then get used to the family taking it in turns
to go on holiday! Of course the schools have "Horts", which are places
the kids can go to have lunch and stay on after school to do their homework until
their parents drop by to pick them up. If you're lucky these Horts are actually
on the school premises, but this isn't always the case. While I'm ranting on
about Public Schools, some schools have large classes (over thirty kids per class)
and in Zurich are now moving over to a system where there will be multiple classes
in the same classroom. Sounds a little like something out of Tom Sawyer to me.
The biggest and most important aspect – in my eyes – in disfavour
of a public school is that you don't get a choice which school you send your
child to.
You are "assigned" a school and told which class your kid
has been enrolled in. If you don't like the teacher, tough! If your child doesn't
get on with the other kids, then there's very little you can do, unless it's
really, really serious. Having said that, there are very strong points in favour
of public schools here. First of all, Pisa Study results notwithstanding, they
are pretty good. The quality of teaching and its effectiveness is pretty respectable.
And it's free! You will end up paying for use of the school's Hort by the hour,
probably, but apart from that, you won't be paying anything for the public school.
This is of course the major downside of the Private School system here in Switzerland.
Look to pay some 3000 Francs (with extras such as lunches, etc.) per month per
child for the privilege. But for that, you get smaller classes, usually lunch
at school and often very nice extras such as bilingual teaching. And you can
choose which school you want to send your child (or children) to. With a private
school, you and your child are customers and the school has every incentive to
want to keep your business. This means that it is easier to enter into a dialogue
with the teachers and the school, to bring concerns and issues to the table and
resolve them. And if that doesn't work out, you can walk out and sign your child
up for another private school. So a private school means that you as a parent
have more leverage and are able to maintain a higher level of involvement with
your child's development.
The demographic background of private school pupils naturally tends to be different
from a public school. With the latter, the school's location defines the background
mix of the families whose children have been assigned to a school and a class.
In Zurich, for instance, there are schools where children with Swiss or European
backgrounds are rare. Most kids are from Sri Lanka, the various Balkan states,
North Africa and so on. I am personally a great fan of cultural mixes and enjoy
contact with other cultures, but it does make a teacher's job difficult to teach
a primary school class where a majority of the kids and parents have an entirely
different cultural background (and may for instance be unused to accepting instructions
from a female teacher) and no common linguistic basis. Due to the cost barrier,
private school pupils tend to come to from families where parents have university
degrees (or higher education at least) and earn accordingly. This means that
these kids tend to come from less varied backgrounds in the sense that they have
the cultural and language skills to participate equally in class right from the
start.
Ultimately, it's a personal decision. If we were living out in the country, liked
the local school, knew the teachers and other parents as neighbours, we would
probably have gone for a public school. But in our particular case, maintaining
and building on our son's bilingualism was a prime consideration and this led
us to decide on the private school path. We have spoken to expat parents who
are delighted with their local public school and others who have been very unhappy
with their choice of private school. Ours isn't the choice for everybody, but
that's the whole point: It's all about having a choice of viable alternatives
and being able to choose freely.
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Who wrote this?
| DANIEL SCHWARZ
CARIGIET Born: 1966 in Lugano, Switzerland - Mother American, father German Family: married to Astrid, father of Oliver |
 |
| Occupation: Freelance photographer / commmunications consultant |
|
DADS TIME archive:
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SUPER
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