Please help!
My family and I are moving to Lausanne in August. I wish to send my son to a Swiss Public School. I have been told that the school which my son will be assiged to is dependant on where I live. That being the case I would love to hear from you as to which Public Schools in Lausanne are considered the best?
First notice that in Switzerland a public school is a state school and is financed by the Canton. You children will then have to go to the school of the part of town where you live but the programmes/cursus are everywhere the same. However, the school atmosphere may be more problematic in the areas where a lot of immigrants live, which is where most subventioned apartments are situated (la Borde, Aloïs-Fauquez, La Bourdonnette for example).
Private schools are financed by private ressources (yours...): from my own experience, 2 very good private schools in Lausanne are Champittet and Ecole Nouvelle de la Suisse romande.
There is an association of private schools:
One important point is that schools are funded by the canton, not by local property taxes as in the US, therefore the differences between given schools is nowhere near as large.
You do not mention how old you son is. Where your son goes for public school will depend on his age. To go to the first year of kindergarden (1er enfantine), he need to have turned 4 before the official cut off date, June 30. There are exceptions: if he turns 4 during the months of May or June, you can postpone for a year, and if he turns 4 during the months of July or August, you can advance him after having an interview with the director of your school district.
As you are coming from abroad, you may have to see with the director which grade he would fit in. Even friends moving from other cantons have had this problem!
My kids go to the kindergarden (2 years in Lausanne) at "Florimont". I love this school. It is small, so nice for younger kids. When my first child went to this school, there were only 2 kindergarden classes. Now they have added 1 primary school class, so it is very small, intimate and the teachers are great.
After this school, they can go to the slightly larger, but still nice-sized "Eglantine" for the rest of primary school. My kids will go here later and I have heard only good things from friends. These 2 schools are part of the "Mon Repos" school district, but I have heard less positive things about the Mon Repos school (although I have heard from 2 acquaintances that their kids love this school).
The catchment area for Florimont and Eglantine (the 2 schools work closely together, e.g. the children from Florimont go to gym and music classes at Eglantine) is a nice area to live in: roughly north of Avenue des Alpes to south of Avenue Mon Repos, east of Avenue de la Gare and west of Avenue de Léman.
Hope this helps,
The Pully public school is known to have a very high level of education. People move to this area or say their children are living with family (if they have somebody who lives in Pully) just to send their children there. Lutry sends their higher levels to Pully. The Lutry school is is also considered a very good public school. There are more but it really does depend on where you live. Let us have some more details about your child's age, sporting talents etc... then we could help you further.
My son is 9 years old, academically brilliant, a basketball player and a generally good athlete.
In the IGCSE school system that he is in presently, he has completed Grade 4 and is ready to join grade 5.
The reason this has become a priority for me is that in the last 5 years, we have had to move him to 3 different schools. Let me explain: In the first school that he studied (A British National Curriculum school in Dubai) the teachers constantly complained that he was not paying attention in class and recommended that we take him to a psychiatrist for evaluation. The psychiatrist concluded that my son was simply bored as he was not being challenged. We were asked to move him to a more challenging school - which we promptly did and he began to take interest in school.
About a year later, his old behaviour came back again. We took him back to the psychiatrist who again concluded that his academic ability was not being tapped and recommended one of the top schools in Dubai. We moved him here and he has been a brilliant student since then. The psychiatrist also concluded that my son has a gift for languages: My wife and I are from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, (2 languages), he speaks English and then there is Arabic in the local Dubai curriculum.
This is why I am looking to find the right school for my son.
Hi Zulu! I take an interest to the public school in Pully you described in your message. I have a son of 12 years old and a daughter of 4 and plan to move to CH in June-July 2010. Could you please advise if the school you wrote about is the only one secondary school in Pully? What is the address of this school? What region is it covered? Is there a special adaptation programme for non-French-speaking children in this school?
Thanks a lot in advance for your comments and reply! Anna.