But he wasn't physically isolated from the other children, the school is so small you're never far from someone else. He had plenty of time to socialise between activities and during the non-teaching periods.
They don't often have kids that don't speak either German or English, usually they don't take more than one at a time so they can put the effort into helping him/her learning the languages.
Also, we had issues at the previous (French) school which led him to 1) reject the idea of going to school completely; 2) be very demotivated about learning German. The staff at Sprungbrett had to go the extra mile to gain his trust and get him back on track.
The school is very expensive, but if we feel he isn't ready to go to the local school when the company money runs off, we'll dig in our private savings to keep him there. Same if I find a job, we'll prioritise keeping him there over other types of spending.
Tom
I'd say the contrary: If a private school has a waiting list, then you know they have a serious practical problem and really can't have more students in some classes.
The canton will almost certainly provide German lessons; the issue there is that it may cut into his normal school time, so he falls behind. But - repeating a year is very normal here, I'd guess >25% of the kids have repeated at some point. Maybe he does the first part year, then repeats once he has decent German.
As for you - most educated people here seem to speak more English than they will admit to, so unless you're very unlucky the teacher will probably be able to explain basic stuff in some English. Our first teacher didn't speak much, so the German teacher came along to help because she also spoke English. Ask before going.
A bigger issue is the presentations and stuff - hopefully you can make friends with an English speaker and sit next to them to get a basic idea of what they're talking about. After the first year you get to know the drill and what's happening, so verbatim understanding isn't necessary.
My experience in 1:1 meetings is that teachers have always been very flexible and have talked to me in English. When my German got better after a year of living in Switzerland, they moved into "easy German" so I could follow them.
Written notes have also been in English many times although I have never asked for a translation to the teachers. At the beginning I used Google Translate or my Swiss neighbours helped.
It is very important that you also learn German as soon as possible. It will make your life easier and you will feel more confortable in your new home country.
The local school authority will be notified when you register, and they will contact you - they will allocate the school or 'integration' programme and control the decision making.
Really, it's very straightforward, you could virtually turn up at the town hall, register, and they will contact you...
It could be made faster by presenting yourself to the local school authority office (not the local school but the 'consultorio' for the school cluster).
It's based pretty much on where you will live. Do you have an address yet ?
We arrived in 2008 and were able to get our employer's help to find an apartment that gave us stability...from the start...you do need to be willing to adapt and not expect to have too many choices. Basically we found about 12 apartments that were 'acceptable' to us using criteria such as size, layout, location, price, and then the employer assigned someone to sort out the details - they were lucky in that it all worked out and we were absolutely happy with our first address...and stayed for over 2 years before moving to another part of Zurich due to me starting a new job...
There are school holidays late march/early april in Zurich so if your timing works then the kids might be off for longer so they could start school after the 'spring' break... this is not a bad idea... but remember too that having kids at home for too long will just tie you up with more responsibility - our kids were pretty much overloaded and bored by about 10 days along... and we had so many things we wanted to do to get the new home sorted out, dragging the kids around was painful!
Thanks Swisspea for all the info, only now I read your, I understand.
In our case, they would not accept the children into school when there were only two weeks left of the school year.
But I had the impression that if they had arrived 4-6 weeks before the end of the school year (the end of school year here is about 15 July) they would have been able to commence school within a week of registering.
It's worth being aware that in some areas, an integration class serves more than one school in the district, so moving out of the integration class can involve a change of school. I presume that in districts with higher proportions of new arrivals, there are more integration classes.
The teacher might not know of this process, so bring it up and ask for them to make the arrangement. This applies to canton Zurich.
For the Elternabend (the meetings between the teachers and all parents together) were in German (luckily high german)--but there may be someone willing to translate for you.
By the way, all the teachers we interacted with (3 in total up to now) spoke English or at least understood us when we spoke to them in English.
Good luck
He is in an international school and there is no waiting list at his school.
All parent/teacher meetings are in English, lessosn are too, but very high priority is placed on French (they have an hour and a half lesson every day). When they get to the age of 12, German will be introduced as well.
If you anticipate a longer stay in temporary accomodation, I would register them with that address, so they can start. Try to find temp accomodation near the area you want to live, then at least the integration program might stay the same when you move into your permanent locaton.