At some point in the future I'd like to take the family back to my home (Australia) for a year or two to experience life there and was wondering if there's an 'optimum' time to take the kids out of Swiss school for a bit. I want them to get a good grip of Swiss German first (we're an all English speaking family) and wouldn't want to disrupt their secondary years too much. Has anyone got any opinions on this?

A "year or two" is a long time... what are you going to do for schooling during that time... are you staying in one location in Oz, or travelling around?

Depends if they are going to come back to Switzerland for their secondary education, and how their language skills were. I would say before 12 if they are confident to miss a year then jump into secondary. Or wait until uni and take a gap year

Unless they practice the language, then they are going to lose it. You could limit the loss with passive media like videos, songs, books etc. The good thing is that Swiss German / German would come back very quickly when you return.

Personally, I'd say best age would be between the ages of 7 and 10. (I have reasons for saying that, but I have to get back to work. Will check this thread again later).

One of ours was 8, and came back 10 1/2, the other was 10 and came back at 12 1/2. Tough for both - in both directions. The younger one went from the end of class 1 here into 2/3 of the way through year 3 in an ordinary state-run school in England. The older one, due to the more 'intensive' lessons here, wasn't as much behind her new class-mates, but the schooling was very different. Now they are adult and both still have both languages. They gained in understanding for others who have problems, learned that there are more ways of doing things than the one they first learned and they understood their Mum's odd ways much better afterwards, which was very nice too - and still is.

I think it was probably the best possible time really. They were old enough to profit from the change and remember the language and the country without too much pressure from us.

__________________
Longbyt

thanks for the replies so far... regarding what we would do for schooling, the kids would go to a local school

Longbyt - did your kids have any exposure to German whilst you were away? I imagine we could expose them to German TV, books etc but am worried about them losing the local dialect...