We are moving to Geneva in fall and my 9 year old, going into 4th grade, has high functioning autism and has an IEP here in the US. He is completely mainstreamed but has access to classroom aide support as needed and use of the resource room as needed. Also his teachers work closely with me and the special ed staff/aides.
We need to find a place to live and if possible I would like to find/target a public school in Geneva where people have had good experiences with special needs kiddos. I don't think that putting him into a specialized/sped public school in Geneva would be appropriate, but it seems that is what they do with ALL special education kids from what I read? If he has autism is it automatic that he would have to attend a specialized school? Or can he attend regular public school with support?
Is there an IEP type process in Switzerland?
Combine with this the language issue in that he does not speak French and I am not sure where he would fit in? What is more important - being in a good "welcome" program to learn French in school or good school for support?
Can anyone out there offer advice in terms of public primary schools in Geneva area that are good with special needs support? or just a good school in general that I could probably work with on this? Or anything at all in terms of how to go about finding the best solution for him?
Any experiences with special needs in public school at all is welcome too.
THANKS
Morning!
I too have a high functioning autistic son but he is a bit younger (6 years). I also cannot answer for how things are in Geneva specifically but thought I would reassure you regarding the aim for educating special needs children - in 2004 a federal law was passed declaring that special needs children should be educated in the mainstream and that cantons should organise their services with this in mind. Since then, the provision of in class aides has become much better - certainly in bigger, more populated cantons. The drawback of this is that the training of the aide assigned to your school is often not appropriate to your son's needs but rather a general special needs background. It is also still difficult to get 1 to 1 support still although I have heard of it in both Zurich and Baselstadt cantons.
There is no individual education plan as such but with input from the school educational psychologist, the school will come up with an arrangement to give your son support. I have never heard of "resource rooms/breakout rooms/sensory rooms etc". outside of specialised schools.
With regard to the language learning, it is possible depending on where his particular talents lie, that he will pick this up quicker than his neurotypical peers - after 9 months of learning French, my son's vocabulary was tested as being that of a 7 yr old (he had just turned 5). His issues are communication not language as we always say. However, this will complicate his initial introduction into school and it is common for non French speaking kids to be grouped together in a special class which concentrates on language acquisition at first.
You need to contact the educational authorities asap. You also should contact allspecialkids.org - one of the best ex pat special needs support (non profit) organisations in the whole of CH and ... based in Geneva. The lady who runs this group will be able to give you a precise idea of what where to start and how.
Good luck.
Many many thanks, that eases my mind a little just knowing a bit more about laws and what to expect and advocate for. and I can relate to all you said about your son. Thanks so much again and I hope your son's school experience continues to be supportive!
It's a pleasure.
One more thing - ask if they have any specialised parallel classes for autistic children. Our Canton voted to create one a couple of years ago and are being very slow about creating the class but their ideas for how such a class would and could work are absolutely brilliant.
Do you mean basically a class with only the kids with autism that basically is same curriculum as the rest of kiddos, just more geared to what their needs are? Can you elaborate just a little on this idea when you get time so I ca keep that in mind when speaking with the canton folks? I will ask allspecialkids about this as well, thanks for that info.
Pretty much that - they will be inside the main primary school (going up to age 12/13) and will share certain classes (eg sport, craft and design). The idea is that the core subjects at this age (French maths and foreign languages (German and English)) will be taught in this group and as much as possible for other classes they will integrate - and indeed depending on the child, they will have the option of integrating for any of the mainstream classes where appropriate, and particularly as a precursor to joining the mainstream schooling full time.
The view we are taking is that we are a small canton and have limited resources, so far better to gather together some really specialised teachers in one spot who have the resources to teach these children in the unusual ways that often reap huge rewards rather then dispersing them throughout the school system and having very little access to anything specialised.
My son currently has a brilliant primary teacher who teaches him one to one for up to 2.5 hours a day (even though he is still in enfantine so should not be getting any formalised teaching at all). They use all the usual autism supports (TEACHH, PECS, various French language apps conceived for autistic children) as are appropriate for the children and from what we can see, the teacher pays very little attention to what the cantonal curriculum otherwise tells him he should be teaching, instead following my son's "emerging skills". The downside is that my son is currently in a special school to access this but given the size of the Canton, this actually amounts to only 6 children with similar needs each with an individualised daily plan which incorporates lots of intensive therapy as well - so for now and for his level of needs, it's working brilliantly. But I can see this "integration" class (if it ever gets set up ) would be an ideal next step in a couple of years.