Hello everyone,

We are planning on moving to Lausanne and thinking about sending our 4 year old to Ecole Bilingue de Suisse Romande. Does anyone know if this school is any good or not? And if it's not very good, do you have any recommendations for good bilingual schools there? Many thanks indeed! )

do you mean ENSR - ecole nouvelle de la suisse romande?? if so, our girls have just been accepted there! we currently live in Middle East but are moving to lausanne soon.
i think another one is champittet
HEY, we are just new, maybe someone else on the forum has more advise?

We arrived this summer and have our 3 kids at Champittet in Pully. Although I had some reservations when we decided on the school (first foray into private schools), we have been very pleased. Our kids are 12 (as of today!!), 10 and 7. The 12 and 10 yo are in a FLE class (French for foreign speakers - equivalent of ESL for us anglophiles!). It is an intensive French class - they started the year with 9 students, which includes both 5 & 6th grade. They are now at 11 students. Its been great and would highly recommend.

Know of one person with a child in preschool at ENSR and they are happy.

HTH!

The two schools are different - there is the EBSR (Ecole Bilingue) and the ENSR (Ecole Nouvelle. Opinions differ but I personally wouldn't consider the ENSR to be bilingual as such.)
I have heard excellent things about both places from parents.
There is also the Haut-Lac in Vevey, which again is meant to be superb too.
Good luck with your choice!

PS Hope the move goes well. We moved from Zurich to Lausanne :-)

I visited the EBSR last year. Sounds exciting, programm is ambitious, and this is the only "real" bilingual school in Lausanne, where you become fluent in both language, IMO

I was thinking about sending my kid there. But, in the meantime, I discussed on a forum with a mother who had removed her kids from this school the 1 st year, and said nasty things about the director. Then I found another mother on another forum who way very happy !!

At the end, I don't know what to think about it.
Best option wold be to visit it as a first step :-)

My daughter is 4 years old too and I started looking for school in Lausanne areas for her since couple of months ago. I personally visited and talked to the director in some of the schools.

Before going into reputation and quality check, you might want to ask yourself "what is the priority you want? --- language, budget, proximity, international exposure etc". The reason is that there're not many private schools around and also each of them is rather 'unique' in the basic offering e.g. languages. Your choice will end up to be out of with elimination

The several big/medium schools as far as I know (and I had the chance to talk to the directors):
ISL :international school of Lausanne : 95%+ english, good connection if you are likely to move abroad

Champeitte : Private swiss school . Mainly french, little english, higher academic standard at kindergarten time...

EBSR : 50/50 english/french. It's a rather new school. I visited their booth during an expat exposition and talked to the director. She used to be a teacher and decided to set up a school after realizing there isn't truly bilingual school in the area. I have to say the conversation with her wasn't too impressive and we don't want to try new school. A little english mistake in the school brochure has further confirmed our decision.

ENSR : Private swiss school. Mainly french, little english, similar academic standard as government/public school. Very flexible schedule like daycare and after school activities provided.

If you want more details, you could visit their website. If you want to share more specific opinion in details, please PM me.

After this intensive search, I pretty much made up the choice for my daughter.

Hi
A friend of mine is waiting for a place for her boys at ecole nouvelle de la suisse romande. She said that it has a very good reputation.

Champittet also offers extended day opportunities for kids as well. They also have transportation available (for a price of course!). Some of the things we were considering were the desire to not be a school that was too transitory (like ISL) for a sense of stability for our kids, as well as a school where they would be sure to learn French (we didn't want to pass up the unique opportunity for the kids to become bilingual). English is still part of the school, and there are many anglophiles. We particularly like that the school population is fairly international with a percentage of expats, so our kids are able to mingle with kids how are in a similar situation, and therefore more understanding.

Don't bother with St George's School in Clarens/Montreux. They'll tell you that they have a 'progressive bilingualism' approach and it is advertised on their website. But, that's BS unless you think of 'progressive' as working on a geological timescale. They are basically a stodgy old British school with uniforms from Hogwarts, a Headmaster/Principal with his head up his fundament and a language programme that makes a Berlitz or Rosetta Stone CD set seem like a better option. My kid's been there two years and can't string a sentence together in French.

Haut-Lac in Vevey might be your best bet. Full bilingual approach, or an English language based stream with lots of French language tuition. Depends on your set-up at home, i.e. if you are both English and not French speakers, you might not get into the bilingual programme. If you go bilingual, you'll need to decide which subjects in French and which in English. Your child will not be able to take a subject in French and sit the exam in English - that's not how bilingual schools work.

You need to know that Champittet is a faith-based school (catholic), which is fine if you are of that faith. If you are looking for non-denominational schools, you need to look elsewhere.

Alors, bon chance!

Curious.

You evidently do not like the school, but your child has still been there for two years.

Hmmm.

Pls note that although Champittet is a 'faith-based' school, integrating religion is not obligatory. Although my husband is French, I am not and don't necessarily agree with some of the catholic teachings. Our children do not receive any religious instruction. As far as I am aware, they have been to a mass about 3 times this year (where they understood absolutely nothing and were bored to tears), and my youngest did a faith-based play for christmas. The chapel is beautiful and the priest, whom we met briefly was extremely nice and welcoming. Don't exclude Champittet as an option if you are worried about religion. It was a concern for me when 'school shopping' and I am pleased to share that my concerns were not merited!

I'll be in trouble again for this like as not, but I can only suggest that members reading very negative or very positive posts about anything on here take the join date and number of posts of the poster into consideration when judging the possible validity of the opinion given.

I am not implying that the information given by a 'just joined / first time posting' member is necessarily more biased than that of another EFer, but in the latter case we have more to compare the post with. Does the member usually see both sides of a question on other subjects? Or do they tend to be a 'drama queen'?

Are they perhaps connected with the organisation they are praising? or have they connections to another place offering similar services? In the case of a long-term member someone probably knows of any affinities and will spill the beans soon enough. In the case of a new member we can only cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Mod hat off again.

Just to clarify, I have 3 children at Champittet (as previously stated both here and in other posts). We arrived this summer from the US. It is my first experience with a private school. I personally have always attended American public schools, as have my children until our move here. You can tell from the posts that I have previously made, that my decision was a difficult one for me, loaded with lots of concerns and reservations. I had found the posts and experience from other EF's to be not only invaluable but reassuring.

I am pleased that for the moment we are happy with our choice. Don't get me wrong, it is not perfect. There is always room for improvement. However, hubbie and I feel that they are truly getting a strong base in French and once mainstreamed next year (they are currently in a FLE class - French for foreign learners), it will be more of a bilingual experience (where certain subjects are taught in English). The FLE class has been great because of its intensity as well as being an environment with other kids in a similar situation, therefore somewhat reassuring and easier for the kids. This of course pertains to the 12 & 10 yo; the 7 yo was mainstreamed because of his age.

Another reason we feel so pleased with Champittet is that they have gone out of their way to help us with some concerns regarding our youngest, who has some delays. We had all hoped that Champittet would be a good fit, but unfortunately it was not. They really worked with us during the time it took us to get him into a more supportive environment (ie a special ed class at the local school which started yesterday!). During this time, they allowed us to bring in an aid, attended meetings with us in conjunction with the local school system (Pully) and helped adjust his curriculum to better accommodate his abilities. From my perspective, they went above and beyond what would be expected and required of them, and this is one of the main reasons we are so happy with the school.

My posts are somewhat specific in topic and not constant. Given the fact that I have only been here for about 6 months, there is only so much I can contribute. However, I try to contribute when I can - trying to pay it forward!!

I certainly don't want to get in a debate about religion, especially on the EF, but thought I would point out that indeed religion is part of the cursus at Champittet. Here is the link to the program at their website, religion is taught at each level in the primary school, it is right at the top of the list. I know many children at the Champittet Nyon campus past and present, and it was indeed part of the program, albeit only perhaps one period per week.

http://www.champittet.ch/data/pdf/Ch...iplines-fr.pdf

I have a friend who has removed her child from Champittet for this very reason. She was assured that it was possible for her child to not be included in any religion classes, this was something she was very specific about with the school. She found out that somehow this was forgotten and her child did in fact stay with her class while religion was being taught (the child is young so in no position to point out the problem).

Personally, I think if you are uncomfortable with religious instruction for your child you should really think long and hard about Champittet. As runningdeer pointed out, it is a part of the curriculum.

The Ecole Bilingue at Lausanne, I find is a very good school for the 4-6 yr olds (can't say anything for the elementary classes because it doesn't concern me yet!).
They have a very rich program (1 hour a day of French lessons for the English students and 1 hour of English for the French students) touching every subject. The teachers speak both French and English all during the day and seem to have a great way to motivate the kids.
Plenty of recess time (after all, they are still kids and need to play!) and fun activities.
There are children of all nationalities which I thing is important.

Ecole Nouvelle is also a good school, but very expensive. They give you a base price and then have to add on for every activity your child does.

Not sure why this same message is on the same day on two similar threads...? Also, these are the poster's only two posts since joining.

By any chance are you associated with The Ecole Bilingue at Lausanne?

No, I'm not associated with the school. It's may first time posting on this forum and was not sure how it worked!

Here's our experience with finding a school in Lausanne:

Our kids (now 8 and 11) were born in South Africa, but went to school in Cambridge (UK) for 3 years, before we came to Switzerland two years ago.

The first year we sent them to the public school in Le Mont-sur-Lausanne. Our hope was that immersing them in the local school would be the fasted way for them to integrate here and learn French rapidly. This plan did not work out. Even though they received one-on-one lessons in French, which certainly helped, it took them a while to pick the basics allowing them to communicate with other kids. We believe that their main difficulty was to integrate socially. This had been no problem at all in England, but somehow they remained isolated here, probably because the local kids (and their parents) were less accustomed and open to foreigners, who don't know yet their language and culture.

After a year of suffering (at times it was really bad, and we even involved the school psychologist and talked with the school director and teachers) we decided to give up on the local (free) schools, and try out a private school. Most of them (ISL, ENSR, ERSY) had no free slots, so we were happy to get two places in the Ecole bilingue de Suisse Romande (EBSR), which had been recommended to us by a colleague.

This school really changed our life: It is a small school, close to Lausanne's central train station and the Flon (LEB, M1, M2) for kids aged 5+ (currently until 12 years, but growing each year). The head mistress is a very energetic woman, whose ideas on schooling were very much aligned with ours: The focus of the teaching is to arouse the kids' curiosity and provide them with the means to independently follow their interests. Nevertheless, it's not a school where the kids can do whatever they want; in fact the curriculum is rather comprehensive, including Math, English, French, Latin, Philosophy and Science in the morning, and a broad afternoon program with pottery, cooking, wood-work, hand-crafting, sports etc. What was really different to our experience with the local Swiss school is that our children appear to be really enjoying the experience of learning, and their natural curiosity is being stimulated deeply. In fact, often they want to stay longer (and that after having been there from 8:30 to 18:00!).

We believe that this is also a result of the very friendly social climate amongst the children. Most of them are foreigners, although some have at least one Swiss parent. As a result the atmosphere is very international (but not snobby at all), and it is not by accident that the slogan of the school is "At Home in the World". Very rapidly our kids regained their confidence to make friends, and were soon very integrated. They now are fluent in French, and swap between their two languages as if it's the most normal thing in the world ...

In summary, we had a very positive experience with the EBSR, feeling that it was ideally suited for the intellectual and emotional needs of our children. Of course the choice of school is a very personal matter, but we thought it's worth sharing our story here :-)

Thank you very much for sharing your experience. There are a few angry mothers around who are unhappy with certain aspects of this school and it's very important to also share the positive points too!