Hello Everyone,
I’d appreciate some honest advice regarding the Primary School in Erlenmatt. We’re considering moving to the area, but the reviews we’ve come across about the school haven’t been very encouraging. Does anyone have any personal experience with the school or recommendations for better public primary schools in the area?
Thanks!
Welcome to the forum. 
Fyi you don’t get to choose which schools your children will go to; they’re assigned places by the gemeinde/commune you live in. So if you don’t want them to go to that school, don’t move there.
And the choices can be really arbitrary and strange. I see siblings just a year apart in age being sent to different schools making it a huge nightmare for the school run.
Another case where a kid was sent to a different school than the rest of her KG cohort (for reasons I later discovered and were completely stupid - and nothing to do with the kid in question, she was just the unlucky victim).
One of the big advantages of urban life in Switzerland is that most primary school kids walk or maybe bus to school, whereas the school run is the exception. Where the Gemeinde has more than one primary school, then assignment becomes an issue but it should be open to discussion. Sorry, no idea about Erlenmatt, but Basel is a lovely, cosmopolitan and vibrant city.
Isn’t that true in most European countries? Well maybe excepting any recent helicopter parent trends.
I am curious as to where you found reviews about primary schools…
This school and others in kleinbasel had the challenges of assimilating pupils from diverse backgrounds. Some of them very challenging. How that has changed now since 2017 I am not sure, but to benefit from your children learning German from other children, you need to live in an area with a higher population of native German speakers. In Baselstadt this is Riehen, Gellert, The area round the zoo, Bruderholz. Avoid Kleinhünigen and Erlenmatt. Gündeli is middling. You do not get to choose which school
They speak in the local dialect where we live and btw, Swiss kids too can make a lot of mistakes in High-German. Of course, it’s preferable to live in a mainly Swiss neighbourhood from a certain point of view - integration, local dialect(s) etc.
Or German kids for that matter. Whenever I see our kids’ Whatsapp messages, I want to cry.
These reviews were mainly from word of mouth from Swiss colleagues as well as some consultants helping with our move.
Same for French. Some of the messages I receive in French from the (native French speaking) teens I teach make me want to cry too.
We moved to one of these areas when our child was about to start primary school, as we spoke no German at home. Her primary was good, it’s been great for her German and Swiss German. We also have good memories of her time in Kindergarten in a very mixed area (only 2 kids spoke German at home).