does anybody of you have experience with SIS (Swiss International School) in Männedorf?
I will be moving to Männedorf/Zurich area mid 2019 and was considering to send my 4 y.o. son there.
Any comment is welcome!
thanks
Dears,
Hi there
We have sent our kid there and we were terrible disappointed. The school is very badly run and the teacher are not motivated at all.
I highly recommend the Lakeside School or the public School.
I hope I was able to help you.
Good luck.
Two postings on this board (within 5 months) and both basically solely on the ground of bashing a certain school.
Now one COULD assume you're either a disappointed former employee from there, or running a nearby school (Do I dare to say "Lakeside school"?) of similar levels, but of course no one would do that
And probably somebody COULD assume that you are working for this school :-) It is just an honest opinion and if someone is asking for help of course I will tell them my experience.
Experience is always subjective but when I was looking for a school when we moved to Switzerland, I would have been very happy if I would have found ANYTHING about this school. Unfortunately there was not even 1 post... Especially for Expats working / living in another country where they don't know the system, a forum like the English Forum Switzerland is very very helpful.
So it would be nice if we can share our experience and not get attacked for our help and hints we are giving.
Have a lovely day
I live locally there and would recommend using the local schools (from Meilen to Stäfa) they have good integration classes for foreign kids and he will have friends close by in no time. Any of the international schools have kids from all over so his best mate might live several villages away. There is also Tandem preschool in Uetikon which teaches in English if that is your priority.
I don't have any personal experience of these schools. However, if you do consider looking further afield then you might want to check out Double Decker in Kusnacht. It has a good reputation as far as I am aware. https://www.doubledecker.ch/
But you are not sharing experiences. What is OP supposed to do with <> that is nondescript.
Same in your post about this school in 2018. They didn't say hi.
And < Give OP facts, mention your feelings about them but keep them minimal. OP needs info to make their own decision on.
Ok.
First of all: I want to send my kid to a school where she/he is welcome. Just by saying "Good morning" or "Hi" or something like this. If the teachers avoid eye contact with the parents/kids and walk away if a child is crying; in my opinion it's not a very "warm" welcome into a new day of school.
Individual care for my child: every child is on a different level specially in a international school where the kids have different backgrounds as they are coming from other school systems. The British System / the American, the German and so on are very very different. I don't need a 1:1 support for my child but it would be good, if the school is able to catch the kids up at their different levels (e.g. a kid which is able to read doesn't need to learn the alphabet again...) The school was not able to offer this - so that's my reason for saying they don't offer individual care...
The teacher were not able to integrate my kid into the existing class: my kid was always crying in the morning. it was not possible to bring my kid there without a big drama in advance. I never had any problem with other schools before and now as well. My kid had no friends there as the kids knew each other before and they didn't want to integrate my kid. So it would have been the teachers job to help my kid making friends.
Badly run: the flow of information is very badly. They sent out several times wrong newsletters with wrong dates (happened more than 1 time) and we were waiting for a simple list of the class for about 4 weeks (so we didn't even know the names of the kids).
The teachers are not motivated: it is more important for them to look at their cellphones and waiting every minute in the building before the bell is ringing. There was several times absolutely NO ONE who was looking after the kids when they were playing on the campus (and the campus is big with a lot of hiding places...). One time I had to safe a kid hanging from a climbing framework with a rope around his belly as nobody was there to help him.
My kid made a picture for a teacher in the first week. The teacher took the picture, put it on a chair and walked away. Not even saying thank you or anything like this. My kid hasn't made any pictures for teachers since then (in his former school in London the teacher told us that he pinned the picture of our kid at his fridge and he was very happy about it). Even this might be not true you can at least say thank you to the kid who made a picture just for you (this is my opinion)
Anyhow: I hope this is enough of information with a lot of details why we don't recommend this school. I hope it helps someone.
Me and someone else said before: the local schools are very good and they are free of charge... if it has to be a international school there are better ones than this.
Is this every morning? Did you take your child into the classroom every day and the teacher just ignored everyone coming in or was it a one-off?
Basically you are describing 1:1. Yes, kids come from different backgrounds but you can't tailor each lesson for each individual pupil on such a detailed level.
Sorry but it's not the teacher's job to make sure your child has friends. Did you invite any of the kids to your place for a play date? Arrange to meet? Do anything proactive yourself? Encourage your child to make friends by him/herself, because that's what life is like?
Is distributing a list of pupils a priority for the school? Sometimes in these international schools the other parents are funny about spreading their details around so perhaps it wasn't the school's fault at all.
Did you point it out to the school?
You seem to be setting the bar a bit too high here. Even the most diligent of teachers shouldn't be judged on whether they're willing to put pictures of the pupils on their own home fridge.
You don't mention the academic results of the school. Surely that would help people more than worrying that a teacher placed a child's picture on a chair or didn't "say hello" when they arrive.
I'm not sure even the local schools will hit the bar you are suggesting in your posts.
I find the reaction here on the forum to critical post about international schools a bit strange I must admit. It very quickly becomes a “shoot the messenger “ atmosphere.
When you pay 30KCHF per year I understand parents put the bar higher. My impression of many of the new international schools is that they are often run by amateurs and the only thing they really offer is a Swiss schooling in English and for that they charge a high price. International parents however usually come with other expectations and that is often not catered for as it would cost the schools a lot of money to provide this. They would have to hire much more qualified staff which would eat in to thie their profits/reserves.
Personally I would not recommend to put a child younger than 12 years anywhere else but in the local school. Anything else is a waste of money. If the child is young and needs full day care due to working parents I would look to live in a Gemeinde that offers Hort and Mittagstisch.
If the kid runs into problems in the public school I would look into a private Swiss school. This as they usually cater for kids who have a ptoblem fitting the norm of a Swiss local school.
I'm firmly on the side of the local school system here but I find it equally strange that people pump out a bad review of a school or a business or whatever based on very little substantial information or an impossibly fickle opinion (" They put my child's picture on a chair instead of their fridge, they don't say hello when my child enters the room, and the teacher won't force the other kids to be friends with my child !" - Jaysus, really? )
If you're going to moan about a school or anything for that matter, at least make it count - the kids are all crap at maths or the German teacher has only just passed B1 German or they never do any sports. Anything which is actually worth a proper complaint.
Here it's like telling everyone the restaurant you went to is the worst in town because you're not keen on the carpet in there, and the head waiter has a limp.
Yes, but if someone asks me if I been to Restaurant XY, I don’t always feel like writing an essay explaining down to the temperature of the water as to why I was disappointed. Often you simply say you didnt like it or you were disappointed or it was over-priced.
A short statement is in my view better than nothing. Especially as there are so few reviews available. It is up to each of us to make our own opinion on how to value the information. I find it a pitty tha short statements like this are so often torn apart by the audience here. I am afraid it might stop people from writing anything at all.
Also, some school are notorious when it comes to taking legal action against negative criticism so a short statement may be warranted and at least serve as a warning to prospective parents.
@ Sandgrounder: OMG do you mean this for real???? The first question of Taomorris was if someone has made any experience with this school. I’ve shared my experience. It was to less detailed for some of the Forum users so I have explained some things that have happened.
Have you made any experience with this school? If so, please be so kind and share them with us. It would be more helpful than comment every single sentence I have made....
You didn’t get the point with my story about the picture.
To say „Hi“ „Good morning“ „Thank you“ if I receive something, this is standard behaviour for me. If that is not for you probably it would be the right school for you and your kids :-) please share your experience and be a help for other people rather than beeing a „Forum Troll“ :-) :-)
I am highly agree with anything Tilia has written. It is perfectly summed up.
Have a lovely day everyone!
From my point of view Susancon's first post was useless but caused a very negative feeling which was unfair to the school and also to the OP.
After I complained about that, Susancon gave examples of what she disliked about the school (thanks ).
A personal opinion/experience was asked for. Personal opinions can not be dissected and discussed by other "third party people" in my opinion. The only one who could argue the points is the school/the teachers there.
To stick with the restaurant example: OP knows now the carpet is hideous and the waiter has a limp.
Whether that counts or not to OP is for OP to decide.
After all Susancon was the only one who - after a little push - shared personal experiences with the school asked about.
We had our child enrolled in this school for one year, and we were counting our days to leave. The school has hard working teachers, but incompetent leadership, which explains the high teacher turnover rate.
Safety of the children is not a priority - not all members of staff are first aid trained. We experienced an incident where not only were the staff ill informed of how to respond, but lacked the training in handling an emergency situation. When we inquired the reason why all staff are not trained, the reason was that turnover rate it too high particularly with assistants/interns, which doesn’t justify the investment in training all staff. In other words cost over safety. SIS is a for profit school.
To say a school doesn’t tolerate discrimination is different from how one acts to that statement. In other words, actions speak louder than words. The school allows discrimination to occur, and the leadership has no idea on how to handle such situations. ‘The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behaviour the leader is willing to tolerate.’ (Gruenten & Whitaker) The leadership at this school will tolerate the good, the bad and the ugly. As a family, we all experienced the worst repetitive form of racism and discrimination from any educational institution we have attended. The worst part is that it happened mostly in front of our child.
We had a big sigh of relief on the last day of school when we left SIS. Fortunately, we have found a much better nonprofit international school now, which embodies and appreciates diversity, equity and inclusion.