In my limited experience, rarely do public school systems cater well to children who are outside the box. The English system probably turns out to be more flexible in the early years because it is easier to deal with children who are less academic or more immature - you simply hold them back a year. But it is difficult to push children up a year in any system.
Again IMHO I think the Swiss don't like being questioned (where did these people gain their social skills and bedside manner? at a swiss kindy/school?) and are much more direct in their responses to questions of accommodating different types of children. However, Govt schools in other countries often give lip service to your views but don't actually do that much practically. Or they may have extended/accelerated programmes - but these create other issues (segregation issues, elitism).
We have one child in an international school and another in a Swiss school. At this point, they're very different children and we think we chose schools that suit them (by luck), but are not 100% happy with either. In both cases, they don't fully engage our children - I don't think any school ever does.
I went to a Grade one meeting yesterday, where our twin boys are, the brother of our four year old, it is a mixed Grade 1/2 class and the expectations of the maths is so low.
Swiss Grade 1 expectation of maths - counting to 20
Swiss Grade 2 expectations of maths = counting to 100
I have a situation where the boys were in Grade 1 at the international school and put into Kindergarten in the Swiss system because of their late birthdays and German fluency. Now that they have the German and Swiss German, in Grade one of the International School they were counting to 100 one year ago and now they have to play with numbers up to 20. Talk about going backwards... I fear that even the Swiss Grade 2 maths wouldn't be challenging enough for them.
We are really in a quandry of pulling the plug on the Swiss system and returning to The UK. If we return to the UK then the two boys would be treated as special needs since their reading / writing ability in English is way below where their piers are.
The kids fall between the systems, no one is at fault, but why doesn't the Swiss system encourage children who want to learn more. There is no test of where your child, is just the assumption that all children are at the same level.
I must take issue with this: the expectations of Swiss teachers are not, by any standards, "too low". The Swiss way of teaching numeracy is intended to make the understanding of the concept of number absolutely rock solid, with lots of repetition, lots of problem solving, lots of number handling, lots of work with number bonds and so on.
To do this, it is necessary to really concentrate on the relationships of the numbers up to 20, before moving on to the similar relationships of numbers up to 100 and beyond. Once the foundation is in place, the rest comes easily, and the end result is that Swiss students, on average, are among the best in the world at maths by the time they leave school.
I was also shocked at what I perceived to be the 'low' standards of numeracy in 1st and 2nd Grade of Swiss schools, but further investigation led me to realise that they really do know what they are doing.
BTW, regarding other posters' comments about children learning to read too early/too late: it is worth observing that English and German are two very different languages (I can't speak for French or Italian), with very different phonic and orthographic rules. The teaching of literacy in the anglosphere starts much earlier than elsewhere for the simple reason that it takes longer to teach a child to read and write in English than it might in other, more regular, languages.
English speaking children really do need the head start that is provided in schools in Britain and elsewhere.
@ Telandy. It's a very hard situation indeed and this is why I have told my husband that now Emilie is in the swiss system she will have to stay there. If we ever go overseas again , I will make sure there is a German international school..often there are German/swiss schools . And this, even if I get a job back in an international english school , I don;t want Emilie to go back to a International system and be put in a class with kids 2 years below her age..Plus i've seen too many of my kids being totally messed around being moved different system all the time. They are really struggling now and can't write any of the languages they speak!
I cannot really think why. We went to England with our children (8 and 10) and although they could more or less read basic English and understood spoken English, they neither spoke it themselves nor could they write it. But no-one suggested for one second they they were 'special needs'. The question was asked whether WE would like to put the younger one into a class a year below, because she was jumping from end of class 1 here, to middle of the class 3 in England. We said no, and that was that.
And of course, the swiss kids here are learning German as a foreign language. There are new kids in Emilie's class ( 1st year of kindy) who only speaks Bern Deutsch. Last summer, Emilie used to play with a 4 year old on the playground who could not understand what she was telling him in Hoch Deutsch !
I love the way that offering structured support for those children who need it is now considered to be "treating them as special needs" and seen as a negative thing, rather than, er, helping them.
Anyone would think we sit them in the corner with a dunce cap on or something...
hmm, Dougal's breakfast, you are a teacher aren't you?
I found you post really quite illimunating about the swiss maths curiculum. And certainly echos what I saw...in the 1st and 2nd grade, I thought gosh this maths looks quite easy, them woompf...the maths my daughter does now is truly shaming my own ability at maths! her mental arithmatic ability astounds me, and she is one who is struggling and so I can't imagine what those who are excelling are like!
Its very good to get more inside information on the swiss schooling methods. It is very different to the UK, and therefore can be the cuase of lots of anxiety. To have more info generally for expats to understand the system better would be great. I don't mean offical websites in German, but helpful personal posts such as yours. So thanks!
In the UK system the boys would be in Grade 2, not Grade 1 as per the Swiss system, just because of the difference in cut off dates, due to late birthdays. This means that they would be expected to write a side of A4 in English and that would be the average level of the class. So they would be classed as special needs, since they couldn't complete the task. That is the reality in the UK system. We could ask them to be put down a year due to their late bithdays and the situations which they have had in the Swiss school.
in malaysia, we learn to read and write english and chinese/tamil/malay in private kindergaten (UK system) at the age of 3 or 4 and i think that its perfectly fine. in fact i think i learned the most in my private institution years..
The boys were dealing with numbers up to 100 in Grade 1 of the International School and were playing number games on the way to school. They had a strong grasp of all aspecs of calculating numbers between 1-100 in any shape or form. Therefore in my opinion they were where I would expect the Swiss Grade 2 to be, one year ago. That is my issue.
First of all - Kindergarten is NOT school. Kindergarten is here to teach the kids the necessary social skills that will enable them to learn more efficiently once they start going to school. Kids PLAY in Kindergarten. They're supposed to be kids there, not students.
Especially for foreign kids, the two years in Kindergarten are very valuable to get up to speed in terms of language proficiency and integration.
I somewhat doubt that your daughter is actually bored in Kindergarten - I suspect there are other reasons why she doesn't feel comfortable there. Have you talked to the teacher about how you daughter's fitting in, how her language skills are (it's very hard for parents who's mother-tongue isn't German to correctly assess the kids' language skills. Even though the kids might impress the parents with their rapid grasp of the new language, their peers, who mostly will have perfect command of the language, might see things differently)?
As someone who went through the whole Swiss school system, I find it amusing how hard some parents make it for themselves and their kids to adapt to the new situation - especially since they're not going to be able to change the system that has served this country and its inhabitants well for decades.
Yes, we start going to school later than in other countries. However, does it hurt the academic development of the kids? Hardly. The "Einschulungsalter" has been subject to debate for decades in Switzerland. If you look at the PISA scores of kids in other countries, it becomes very clear that sending them to school earlier doesn't help a thing to improve their academic capabilities later in life. I learned to read and write when I was seven. I can assure you, I'm quite proficient at it now (and hold an M.A. in linguistics).
Constantly complaining about the school system is not going to be helpful. The kids will pick that up and act accordingly. If your daughter thinks that you deem Kindergarten to be unnecessary, she'll more than likely think the same.
That's a toughie. It's true that the Swiss math curriculum does move very, v-e-r-y s--l--o--w--l--y. I'm a mathematician, not a teacher, but my impression from looking at the curriculum was that that's because it is trying to build more than just solid arithmetic skills - trying to develop an intuition about numbers and a sense for the patterns they form.
The idea is not just to get good at counting or at adding stacks of numbers, but to gently guide children toward discovering on their own that "three and then two more" is the same as "two and then three more"... not just two problems with the same answer, but the SAME THING... or that 4+9 is the same as 5+8 and therefore 6+7 must be the same too... or that an even number plus an even number will always be an even number. You get the idea.
Some kids would pick up on all these patterns naturally anyway during the tons of rote arithmetic drills. Some (most?) wouldn't. US schools don't make a point of it. If the kids come out with good arithmetic skills, that's good enough. If they come out with an appreciation of order and pattern, that's even better - maybe they'll be scientists! - but it is not taught. (Or wasn't, fifteen years ago.)
The Swiss mathematics curriculum, again from what I've seen, places loads of emphasis on this pattern-finding. In the long run it's absolutely brilliant - best thing I've seen for developing students who can make the leap to algebra without difficulty - but the side effect is that in the earlier years you don't get "through" each new operation and on to the next thing nearly so fast. You can teach facts, but it takes time for intuition to grow.
Try explaining that to a six-year-old though! I really sympathize with you there. All I can say is be patient, don't rush the system. They are not going slow just for the sake of going slow... no matter how much it looks like it. There is a reason.
Try to get the boys to accept that math simply may not be challenging for them right now. Not every subject has to be challenging at every turn - English won't be challenging when they start learning it in (Swiss) school either - but homework still has to be done etc. etc.
I would not get too hung up in this. We too were worried about the Swiss school system when my oldest son first started, thought it was way too slow & that the numbers he was doing were far too simple. But as DB said this is just the foundation, after the first 6 - 9 months the learning accelarates to the point where my son who is now 9 is doing the same maths a 9 year old would be doing back home. The Swiss system works out better in the end as he has a much better grounding in how numbers work.
Lou thanks for that I think that is the post I was looking for, it is great to hear that your 9 year old is on a similar level to that, which he would be back home.