Of the English-speaking and bilingual nursery schools/kindergartens in Basle, are there any that work similar to a traditional English pre-prep school?

In your experience, which of them would prepare our son best for a prep school in England, and later a grammar school or an independent school? (Who knows where we'll be in five or ten years time? )

Thanks for any tips!

Montessori maybe?

Are there any kindergartens that would make the transition to an English (day) school easier than others?

You can try the Sunshine playschool on Gundelingerstrasse. This is the email address

<sunshine.playschool@yahoo.com>

Hm. Frankly, the website looks as if it were google-translated.

You should go and visit to see for yourself, I highly recommend Sandra, the lady who runs it, she is a warm, friendly and caring English trained teacher who really knows her early years education.

There are also Monterssori schools in Basel but I'm sorry I don't know much about them. The ISB, international School Basel has a Preschool programme for age 3/4 but it is a little behind the English programme as it does not introduce much reading or writing that English schools would be starting at the same age. It doesn't offer bilingual but does giver German "lessons" from KG onwards. The Swiss International School also has a pre-school programme and is a bilingual programme. However both the ISB and SIS are full time preschool, every day from 8ish -3ish, whereas the Sunshine playgroup is more flexible. Kidscamp in Oberwil is more of a daycare and does not really have such a strong Educational base but is also bilingual.

I hope that gives you a little more information, maybe go and look round the ones that are convenient to get to and see what your impressions are.
good luck

Thanks a lot, that really helps!

May or may not be relevant to your search, but one of the differences between UK and Switzerland is the perception of "public/private" schools.

In the UK, the attitude is "My kid is special so needs to be separated from the masses or his education will suffer". Here it is "If your kid needs to go to a different school to everybody else, there must be something wrong with him".

I thought it was a great example of something which seems so obvious from one angle can turn very different in a different culture!

Anyway, the reason for sharing it is that if you go into a school here and ask "What will prepare my child for a non-mainstream education?", people may not understand

Good luck

Yes, you're absolutely right and I'm aware of that difference. Anyway, I don't expect Swiss nursery-school teachers to know what any later school in England looks like, that's why I asked here .

Open Door Basel is also worth considering. Sandra at Sunshine playgroup is good too