I am coming to zurich with my 6 year old child and wanted to know whether there is any public school with english as the main language ? Or any public bilingual school in zurich ? We will be in zurich for 2-3 years and schooling is not covered by my company. So wanted to know if there is any public english school or any international school where fee in the range of 10K ?
I could see many thread with same topic but as they are quite old (2007,2009 etc), just wondering whether anything has changed after that ?
Children start primary school in Switzerland at the age of 6 or 7, so your child will be entering the school system at an ideal time. In Zürich, the "public" (state-run) schools offer free extra German lessons for children whose mother tongue is not German. These are generally very successful and your child should pick up enough German to participate at school within about three months, and will be quite conversant after a year. By the end of the second year at school, I would expect your child to be pretty much fluent in Swiss and High German (at least, for the latter, as fluent as most Swiss children get).
Don't miss out on this free, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for your child to become bilingual (or trilingual, if you speak an Indian language at home as well as English)!
And just to complete Island Monkey and 22 Yards' excellent replies - there are a few private schools that offer eNglish classes for native speakers who go to local Swiss school. Here in Basel there are 2 or 3. They are usually run by ex pat parents who set the schools up simply because they were worried about this. My son has been going every week since he was 4 (the times of their classes are outside regular school hours) to a little private school here in Basel once a week, (for 2 hours) and he can more than hold his own in the post Christmas thank you letter writing stakes - just as good as his 2 British cousins who are the same age and have been going to UK primary schools. So if your concern is about your child not keeping up with their peer group in English, then this could be the idea compliment to local schooling.
I know I have seen similar schools /English clubs for Zurich mentioned on the forum - maybe someone who uses one could give more precise details?
FYI the average cost of an international school here ranges between CHF25,000 and CHF35,000 usually. English isn’t a Swiss language so will only be taught later and not necessarily at all schools.
I don't have an answer to your actual question, but I'm just butting in to agree with a few of the posters above: I think putting your kid to a local school to learn German would be a good idea. The kid is in a perfect age to learn a new language; every year from now on it will only become harder. Your offspring will thank you later for this excellent opportunity!
We spent two years in China with our kids, who were 5 and 3 at the time we moved there. They both went to a fully Chinese-speaking kindergarten with zero prior knowledge of the language, and they both spoke Mandarin like natives by the time we left the country. After nine months of no contact with the language it's become merely dormant, but that's of course another story...
And I, too, have noticed that, since there are so many children with German only as a second language around here, the language support given in kindergartens and schools is good. It'll be much easier for a child to learn German here than Chinese in China, which wasn't hard at all!
Thank you so much for all the detailed answers. As the next term will only start in Aug, is there anything which you could suggest me for my 6 year old daughter during Apr-July period ?
Kids can start mid-year if necessary. It's normal here as families move around.
Just get in touch with the local authority, you can probably get all the information you need when you go to your local office to register, and they will point you in the right direction.
That is exactly what happened to me in grade one when we moved to Turkey. My mother persuaded the director to accept me to attend the classes and to continue with grade 2 afterwards. I could follow the classes by then.
Maybe you can get in touch with some local schools in advance though I am not sure how flexible Swiss can be But you can try
Another idea is that you let your child watch German cartoons or has some exposure to German already so that she can pick up quickly.
On balance, though, I think the OP might find himself with more issues if he doesn't register the child for school when they arrive rather than waiting for the new term in August to roll around.
Unless he's planning on some kind of homeschooling for the Apr-Jul period? That would get around it, possibly.
My experience is that once your child becomes of the age where obligatory schooling is required (as is the case with a 6 year old) you will be required to enter your child into school within days of your arrival (although obviously you can agree a sensible delay of a couple of weeks or whatever to enable you to settle down).
Certainly if you arrive in April there is still effectively one quarter of the school year left to run - making it very worthwhile for your child to join school immediately, and highly unlikely that the school authorities would not consider it obligatory for your child to enter school as soon as you arrive.
You need to know where you will be living as where your child goes to school is driven by this factor. When you know, you can ring the Gemeinde (town council who deal with school registrations) and ask direct questions.
Our son entered a cantonal special school instead of usual regular school at the compulsory school entrance age, but unfortunately the special school's letter to the education authority confirming that he was being schooled was mislaid. Within a month of the date that he should have entered school, we were sent a follow up letter from the school authorities requesting that we attend a meeting to explain our decision to not take up the school place and to justify what other arrangements we were making for his education I rang and the misunderstanding was quickly cleared up but it showed me that at least here, in Canton Jura, non attendance after the compulsory schooling age is very closely monitored.
I'm guessing (wild hunch) that Tom is referring to school in Ticino, but I'm not sure what he means. AFAIK, throughout Switzerland, children start school (year 1 of primary school) at 6 or 7 (depending on their age in August, at the start of the school year). Most cantons require children to attend (free, if you choose a state school) Kindergarten (Scuola dell'infanzia in Italian) for two years prior to primary school, i.e. from the age of 4 or 5. In Ticino, the entry age for scuola dell'infanzia can be as low as 3, but compulsory attendance starts at 4. (Until recently, some cantons required only one year's attendance at Kindergarten but the cantons are aligning to a federal model with two years in Kindergarten. I'm not sure if this has been finalized yet.)
In the OP's case, arriving in April, s/he should enroll their child in Kindergarten as soon as their place of residence is ascertained. The child will then have at least two months of Kindergarten, including free German lessons, to make friends, learn the language and start to assimilate and integrate. Bear in mind that in all likelihood, most of the children in any given Kindergarten will probably enter the same class (together) in Primarschule in year 1, so it would be a significant advantage for the OP's child to meet and befriend their future primary school classmates before school starts.
Harmos puts it all now under Primary, since the age they start compulsory schooling. In our canton it is 4yr olds (Enfantine - kindy - does not exist anymore). The terminology shift is fun. So, it is creche then straight to Primaire.
So my child started Enfantine CIN 1, then Enfantine CIN 2 but never had Primaire Premiere année, nor Primaire Deuxieme, but thanks to Harmos, continued to Primaire 3me.
It's pretty much the same everywhere now, maybe the years are still not used in Harmos terminology. The only difference seems the year the individual cantons make it compulsory to start schooling, and the year they add another language.
I believe things have changed since then. Under HarmoS, the starting age at school (which as MusicChick points out is now considered to commence with Kindergarten) is harmonized federally, so that children start primary school (year 3 of their education) at a minimum age of 6, except in Obwalden where it's 5 years and 3 months. When HarmoS is complete, the minimum age will be 6 years in all cantons.
That's my understanding. Maybe I missed something, though.