Hi

I'm writing a book about local Swiss public schools for incomers to Switzerland. I am Scottish and have lived here for nearly 25 years with my Swiss husband and two daughters, now 19 and 22. My first book was Beyond chocolate- understanding Swiss culture. I updated it early this year and was dissatisfied that the schools section was so limited. So I decided to get down to a project I had shelved (twice!) and work on a second one. It will cover all stages and types of schools, separate sections on all the cantons as well as anecdotes and wisdom from those who have been through it! Hopefully it will come out next June.

There are a few questions I would like to ask forum members that I will post in the schools section. I look forward to hearing from you.

Margaret Oertig

I thoroughly enjoyed Beyond Chocolate! Good luck with the new book.

Good luck with your project. Not sure how well you know the swiss romande area, but the local schooling here is very different from the swiss german part. Keep also in mind that a lot of the Canton's around here are somewhat radically changing the schooling in the next year of so, in part due to HarmoS, so would suggest you really need to stay on top of all the changes for your book to be up to date. I have found the VD schooling website outdated already, as example. No one is really sure yet how much harmonising HarmoS will really do in practice, and many are implementing in 2012.

Yes, these are important points. You are right, it is all changing. A huge project, really. I am covering all the cantons of Romandie and Ticino too. I will write about general trends like Harmos and how it is implemented in each canton separately (with names of school types and stages as well as criteria for streaming in each). It will be updated every two years, (the ebook maybe every year) so I have a job for life!