Well, in the UK system you simply move on to secondary school at age 11 and get a general package of subjects determined by the school from the National Curriculum for the first couple of years.

From year three you get a chance to start specialising with your choice of GCSE subjects to take exams at 15/16 yrs old. Assuming you get good results you can stay on and choose 2 or 3 to take to 'A' level at 17/18.

If you don't get the grades to stay on at school you can choose to leave education completely at age 16 and seek employment or find a technical college that will let you still study for A levels (for getting into university) or a vocational diploma (to improve your chances of a skilled job).


The choice of GCSEs that you make at around age 14 will broadly determine the sort of higher education path you can take ... if you study music, drama, arts etc. it won't be much use if you want to ultimately study chemistry or physics to degree level. You don't need to have an exact match of A level qualifications to study a subject in university though as it's possible to do 'year zero' at some places or to study additional courses in your first year.


Seems to be a pretty flexible system that doesn't really restrict you too much. Certainly unless you are really academically poor you are unlikely to find that you simply can't get into University.


Gav

Hi,
think there are several points where you can be upgraded to higher level after year 7 and exceptionally after year 8 & 9. not sure of terminology in german, Les raccordements in french. I have been looking at stats of various schools etc. In the commune where we are thinking of staying stats show that for a certain year 2004 , out of 2 classes of total 42 pupils ,10 were put forward for RAC11 ie upgraded from VSG to VSB , although maybe this was just a good year.

jo

Sorry lilith - but I have to take issue with that statement. We see a lot of people making comments that the Swiss system is "good" or "bad" but the real question is for whom? An immigrant, someone who was born here, a doctor, a lawyer, a street sweeper?

It's a complex issue - for example right at the end of school someone in the UK might be specialising in just three subjects, their Swiss counterpart is doing something like 12. When they both go to med school which one will have to spend the first year doing subjects that the other has already covered in high school?

But anyway, straight to your statement - "no school system is ever designed for the outsiders: it must work for the locals...". I'm sorry - but that just isn't true. Immigration is a fact of life in many countries, and the school systems have to flexible enough to account for this. Switzerland has high numbers of foreigners in schools, but is the worst in the OECD in coping with it. Some people try to pretend that it's not the systems fault, they have more foreigners than anybody else. Not true - Australia for example has more foreign born people as a percentage of it's population than any other country in the world, yet it's education system is more migrant friendly than Switzerland (a comparison which isn't difficult to make since so little help is given to migrant children within the normal school system).

Where do I get this opinion from? It's been covered in the press before (also in Switzerland) and in 2002 Unicef produced a comprehensive report called "Educational Disadvantage in Rich Nations". This report contains many graphs as well as theories as to why some countries have better results than others.

Specifically it singled out Germany (and to a lesser extend Switzerland) for the system of choosing at the end of primary school between the different streams. It said that this was the single biggest factor leading to educational disadvantage. Secondly it highlighted Switzerland as the worst for addressing the needs of migrant children.

Therefore I don't think it is fair to say "no school system is ever designed for the outsiders: it must work for the locals...". There are school systems which are designed to accomodate the needs of outsiders.

I would encourage anyone who is interested in seriously debating some of these points to read the report. It is available as a PDF here:

http://www.unicef-icdc.org/publicati.../repcard4e.pdf

It's also true that Switzerland received absolutely shocking marks in the PISA study, which is also old news (the poor results were blamed on the foreigners naturally), but in their defence steps have been taken to address this issue and as I understand it the results have improved slightly.

There have been steps taken at the ballot box to right some of these wrongs lately - showing a clear will of the Swiss people to fix the education system. A welcome improvement from the complacency that comes from simply thinking your education system is world-class. I understand that classes are now to be taught in High-German which should give an enormous advantage (or rather help to mitigate an ennormous disadvanage) to the immigrant children struggling to learn High-German and Swiss German at the same time.

Here's a couple more articles on the subject of education in Switzerland. A snippet from one Swissinfo article:

Here's an article where business in Switzerland criticises the university system:

I do realise than none of this helps our 12-year old in the US with their original question, but some things seem to have been said in this thread which I feel need to be answered and a few more "facts" need to be brought to the table during the many debates we have here about the school system in Switzerland. Too often we judge one system against another. For example we judge a school system we know little about (Switzerland) against one which we know a lot about (UK, US, etc), but I think this view is a bit narrow - we should be comparing many different systems on a broad range of criteria.

How many of the socialist British Labour Government were educated in the private sector? 25%!

From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/e...on/4514156.stm

7% of the UK adults were educated in the private sector. 33% of Members of Parliament were educated in the private sector.

I have no doubt the figures for 'captains of British industry' are the same.

And Switzerland?

I can find no evidence that any of the current of recent past Swiss cabinet (Bundesrat) were privately educated. In fact the idea is laughable to most Swiss...

It’s always easy to cherry pick results and interpret reports to ones needs, so according to an OECD report of 2003 http://www.oecd.org/document/28/0,23..._1_1_1,00.html

I extracted the following from a survey of all countries (UK did not send in their results)

In Math’s Switzerland was only beaten by the following European countries Finland, Netherlands, Lichenstien and Belgium and was higher than the USA

In Reading Switzerland was beaten by Finland,Ireland,Sweeden,NetherlandsBelgium and Norway and was higher than USA

In Science Switzerland was beaten by Finland Lichtenstein and the Netherlands and was higher than USA

In Problem solving Switzerland was beaten by Finland Liechtenstein and Belgium

In all cases Switzerland was higher than Germany, France, Italy, Spain (and most other European countries) and the USA



Nick

maybe the question to ask is:
is it beneficial to get out of school at 16 and get an apprentice position - or continue study until 25 or older and go in on a grad scheme?

In my immediate line management, my board member was an apprentice. He's 41 years old and been with the company 25 years.

You are right, it is easy to cherry pick - but that last statement wasn't true. Also useful to look specificaly at factors that increase educational disadvantage - this highlighted Germany as the worst, and Switzerland was second worst. Yes Switzerland did ok at maths, not very well at reading and writing (see Pisa study, etc).

Comparing Switzerland in a league table to the USA also doesn't help much - there are other differences for example 70% of people in the US receive a teritary education (if they can afford it) compared to a much smaller figure (which I have in my head as 14% but can't prove it right now) in Switzerland.

By the way, small point, but maths doesn't have an apostrophe.

Quote Mark " You are right, it is easy to cherry pick - but that last statement wasn't true. Also useful to look specificaly at factors that increase educational disadvantage - this highlighted Germany as the worst, and Switzerland was second worst. Yes Switzerland did ok at maths, not very well at reading and writing (see Pisa study, etc)."


Mark, according to the link from the site I mentioned "Mean scores in mathematics, reading, science and problem solving in OECD countries and all countries" (which I can't attach) Switzerland does score higher than France, Italy, Spain (and most other European countries) and the USA in both mean scores and upper and lower rankings.

Nick

Oops, sorry, I thought you were commenting on the same report I had just posted, but I see you were referring to a different one. My report also had the same sort of stuff in it. But in any case always good to back up argument with a bit of linking to data, studies, etc. so thanks.

Mark

A quick addendum: The average age of new students at the Fachhochschulen (how would I term this? state colleges?) is 24.2, so I would guess that 25 is not really too old to begin with university, at least not in Switzerland.

http://www.tagi.ch/dyn/news/schweiz/720372.html

Hi,

i am a middle school teacher here in Switzerland. I am form NC, and am now teaching here. Please feel free to reply and hopefully I can answer some of your questions!

M.

Fachhochschulen = universities of applied sciences (7 public in CH, and 1 private Fachhochschule).

Be carefull, private schools in Switzerland have a special status and I think can't be compared to private schools in the UK or US for example.
The same applies to universities here: the cursus that lead to studies at university here are different as well as the selection to be admitted at a uni here.

A comment on the apprentice versus university sytem. The level of universities in the US is widely varying and courses offered on some of them are comparable to for example fachschule which focus on perparing students for particular professions. Levels on many universities in the US (excluding here ivy leagues and other reputable universities or colleges) is quitel low compared to what I have seen in for example universities in the Netherlands and more comparable to a fachschule. Just because something is called a university does not mean it it actually one, some serve the same purpose as a fachshule (or haute ecole). It just sounds fancier that you wen to university. Based on my experience with bright students (and I mean here very bright), most of them do not need the first class education to succeed, there are bright enough to succeed by themselves (sure a good universities puts them on a fast track and can put them into science). Many sub par students go to universities to be associated to the university brand. I favour the way they hire people in the US: Sure if you are just fresh from a reputable college with good grades you probably have a better change than coming from a sub par college with good grades. However if you compare a just graduated student with one who quit university after his BA and has several years of work experience. The odds are in favour of the one with work experience (assuming he/she is not to stupid). What about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Allison? They did not finish University.

John

I was about to reply to some posts here but then I noticed that most are rather old, so I guess there's no point to it.

Just this: when I started at the university of applied sciences I was 25, and I certainly didn't decide that I want to study at 12. I didn't intend to study until well after I've finished school.