Hello everyone, this is my first post on the forum (which I have found very useful). I am English and have a Swiss wife and we are seriously considering moving to Zurich with our two children (3yrs and 1yr) from London. I have worked out salaries and taxes and am now thinking about schools. What are schools like in Zurich, are the international schools better, is fee-paying better than state? What qualifications do they get, can they study in a UK university later? Do schools have catchment areas like here in the UK? Any advice greatly appreciated. Oldest child is bi-lingual but am wondering if it would be best if he went to an English speaking school so he does not lose his English. Thoughts?

Ahhh ... search is a wonderful thing ... have found loads of threads on schools now. I'll take a read of them.

Well done on finding the search function, you'd be amazed at the number of people who fail to do this

I'm in a similar situation and have been here for almost 20 years now. Given that your wife is Swiss, I'd strongly recommend that you send then to Swiss schools when the time comes. It is not that I think they are any better that international schools, but if you are planning on staying around, then it is better for social integration - the kids will make friends locally and those friends will not disappear as so often happens in the international schools and of course you will also get to know a lot of people around your area.

I would not worry at all about them forgetting English, so long as you always speak English with them and do activities in English, such as reading to them, watching English DVDs and so on.

I've just come back from two weeks holidays in Ireland and I can say that without a doubt my two have as good a command of the English language as any of their cousins. In fact a cousin of mine who is a teacher pointed out that my daughter was actually way ahead of the other 7 year olds in that she uses more complex constructions and a more precise choice of words. I put this down to the amount of reading I do with them!

My son, who is 11 and really interested in languages, can slip into a west of Ireland accent and pass himself off as a local without an one being the wiser!

Good luck with that,

Jim

PS - Feel free to PM me, if you have any questions.

I'm at the same crossroads with the same concerns but after reading your comments I feel a lot more comfortable with my decision to put my kids in Swiss school when the time comes

In our case, neither of us is Swiss but we have decided to send our daughter to a local school as it would be easier for her to integrate (and help us to integrate too). Being local, she will eventually walk there and back, too.
The only downside I have seen so far is that of the language issues dealing with the Kindergärtnerin ... we have already received quite a bit of written information, which despite being in High German, is peppered with dialect in a puzzling way.