Given that a significant number of students in Switzerland speak a foreign language, how are they being integrated into the country’s public schools?
During the 2024/2025 academic year (the last for which official figures are available) over 25 percent of students attending Swiss public schools were of foreign nationality – (260,000 out of the roughly 1.03 million enrolled).
Many of them do not speak their region’s language when they are first enrolled, which presents a considerable challenge to teachers and schools in general.
The challenge lies not only in the teaching process itself – that is, how to convey material to students who don’t understand the language, all the while not neglecting Swiss pupils – but also in how to ‘distribute’ these kids among schools and classrooms so they are evenly spread out and not concentrated in one location.
Algorithms to the rescue
Some Swiss municipalities – for instance in Zurich, Thurgau, St. Gallen and Lucerne – use algorithms to determine the composition of classrooms on their territory.
For instance, in the Uster (Zurich) school district, children attend nine primary schools and numerous kindergartens.
However, at some schools, the proportion of children with a foreign language background as well as students from socially disadvantaged families is particularly high.
To mitigate these inequalities, the school district is using a computer-aided allocation system, which distributes children from different social and linguistic backgrounds as evenly as possible across schools and classes.
The goal of the allocation system is “to prevent a strong concentration of social and linguistic disadvantages at specific locations.” school authorities said.
‘integration and immersion’
But whether with the help of algorithms or by other means, Swiss schools place foreign-language children based on the principle of ‘integration and immersion’, as stipulated by the government.
“In Switzerland, the placement of students whose mother tongue differs from the language of instruction, is based on a model of direct integration and immersion, managed in a decentralised manner by each canton,” the government said.
Further, “direct integration should always be preferred to segregated arrangements.”
“For children and adolescents to benefit from healthy psychological and cognitive development, it is essential that they participate as early as possible in daily life – at school and in their community – and experience belonging to the society around them,” the government added.
A decentralised but consistent approach
Those are the federal government’s guidelines, but each of the 26 cantons designs its own educational system – including integraton rules for foreign children.
All, however, follow the recommendations set by the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK)
Its core approach, like the federal government’s, is based on the quick immersion of foreign-language students into regular classes (alongside personalised language support), instead of separating and isolating them.
So in this regard, federal and cantonal approaches align.
