We are looking at the possibility of moving to Basel in the near future. It's an exciting prospect, but given some of what I've read I am concerned about how my children will cope with the state school system.
I have a girl (10) and a boy (8) - both bright and keen to come to Basel. However, I wonder if they might lose out (esp the 10 year old) and be forced into the lower stream of schools because they simply don't have time to learn the language in time to make the 'grammar' stream.
I think that the international school is probably not an option from a price point of view, and my preference would be to be as integrated as possible. May be French schooling is a better option?

If you have any advice / opinions / experience, I'd love to hear from you! Thanks, Rach

Won't that also cost you an arm and a leg? Do your kids already speak French?

By French schooling, I meant using the French state school system (which I assume is free) and living in France and commuting to work in Basel. At the moment we're considering all the options, without a feel for what may or may not be realistic - any input on this is welcome!

When we arrived 18 months ago our children were 11 ½ and 9 ½ and neither spoke French they both dropped down a year , not because of ability but because of age , here they don’t start secondary school until they are 12/13 yrs (as opposed to 11/12 years in UK)
Going to the local school helped enormously for them to settle and integrate into Swiss life. From the first week children from their class would call by for our boys on their way to school. Now 18 months on they both have a good circle of friends all living locally, their social life is full, after school clubs, local football team and friends round every afternoon.
Our youngest boy is now more or less fluent in French and his reading and writing is improving rapidly, the oldest boy is not quite so fluent and if the truth be known he is still more comfortable reading in English and watching films in English.
After completing the last year of primary our oldest one made the grade for the middle secondary school, he was always going to struggle with the written French, and all things considered he did very well to make that grade. OK we are a bit disappointed that it isn’t the “Grammar school “ and realistically we accept that he wont be able to transfer over to the Grammar /pre Gym because of his French grades . However we are working on the assumption that we can put him into an IB program when we leave here in 3 years
The younger one is absolutely fine, his French is really good and his grades are pointing towards the Grammar/pre Gym secondary school.
All in all I think that from a social and integration point of view, it was the right thing to put them into the local school, the standard of education appears to be ok although History leans towards the French side! Geometry is Geometry and a frog looks the same when dissected in French or English if you get my drift. But as I said we fully intend to put them into a private school at the age of 16 to follow an IB programme.

Oh, and they are no longer on MSN messenger every night talking to their friends that they left behind and our phone bills are now without the long international calls! Hope that helps,

Hi Rach,
Just thought I'd put my 2 centimes in as well - although my experience is a bit limited. We currently do the live in France and commute thing - well, my husband does, I'm not yet working, but hopefully that will change! The commute is made really easy by great public transport links, and we love living in France and the lifestyle here, yet still have access to all the services in Basel. We get the best of both worlds! If you are looking for some information on schools close to the border area, there is a link in the St Louis regional page here, although it is only in French. My husband has a colleague who moved to France with 2 kids, and while they knew no French whatsoever before they started, it didn't take them too long to settle in and get a handle on the language, and now both kids are top of their respective classes.

It is worth looking into the Swiss school system thoroughly, and at what the schools here is Basel offer, as I have heard that students can choose to take some of their courses in English - I don't know at what level this starts, I'm afraid I can't give you too many more details, as I am in the process of checking this out myself, but it is worth investigating.

It is also worth checking out your work contract and what provisions your company give you in there for schooling - sometimes companies will give help with fees, sometimes they will pay all fees, and in that case, the international schools could be an option.

In any case, we have found the borderlands - both Basel and France - a great place to live and work.

Thanks for posting your experiences - it all helps in putting a picture together! It would be great to hear from anyone else who has direct experience of helping integrating kids of about this age (10 and 8) into either the Swiss or French state schools.

Thanks again, Rach

Am afraid I can´t help much regarding experience - as am in similar position as you, am currently looking for schools for my 11 year old daughter and 9 year old son in Zürich. We have yet to decide where to send them....

But have noticed that there was a similar post by Wannabe on the same thread. Might be worth a look.

See http://www.englishforum.ch/family-ma...education.html

Jane

Hi,
a question for nicki, we are planning moving to Suisse romande next year. Not yet decided if we`ll go to vaud or fribourg. Did your children get much support, language tuition from the state schools?
Jo

Hi Jo

Yes the schools provide extra tuition to non French speakers, in our case here in Fribourg they have a special teacher who provides lessons at the schools in the area. Our children had 45 mins of tuition every day for the first few months.

There is also an organisation to help all children in all subjects after school, basically thay have University students registered with them who provide lessons in the evenings , you pay the organisation directly and the price is a very reasonable CHF 22 per hour (stg 10)
Hope that helps
Nick.

Here... http://www.basel.ch/en/education/pub...id=578&lang=en

is info on Basel schools.

Here is a Yahoo group with members who have children in state schools throughout Switzerland...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Swiss-Schooling

Here are some general sites...

Education in Switzerland
Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs
http://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/...ch/chwoed.html

The Educational System in Switzerland
http://www.bbw.admin.ch/html/pages/bildung-e.html

The Swiss Education System
http://www2.educa.ch/dyn/129983.asp

Hi Rach,

Our three children started at the local primary school last August. Their ages are 9 and 7 year old twins. Were expecting to get a couple of months of shear hell but, amazingly, this never materialised. We prepared them beforehand by getting them a few private French lessons over the summer, so that they would at least know some of the basics. The school inpector arranged somestate funded lessons for them and now the Twins have finished and are up to speed with their class mates and my eldest is still learning but she is almost there. One things that was evident, was that, they were very tired at the end of a school day and even worse at the endof the term - have you tried sitting in a meeting when you don't understand what everybody is saying?

We placed ours down a year, but this is no issue because the Swiss children do not start school until age 6 and so the English children are a year ahead of the local children and can thus spend time to learn the French.

My daughters are all happy in their new school, have a good circle of friends are doing well with their schooling.

I hope this helps.