For Basel teachers, the pain threshold in the classroom has been exceeded: They demand separate offers for difficult students and thus shake up a dogma of educational policy.
Things are not always so harmonious in the classroom. What to do with difficult students who disrupt the lesson?
Teachers are state employees and as such are not usually rebellious – in the red-green city of Basel even less than elsewhere. It is all the more remarkable that the Basel-Stadt teachers’ association, which has already been described as the most faithful to authority in Switzerland, is now publicly questioning a dogma of education policy and resorting to a sensational, not to say rebellious, means: a popular initiative. The Basel teachers have had enough of the integrative school and are calling for the reintroduction of small classes – or more precisely: remedial classes. With the approval of a majority of the delegates, your professional association has successfully collected signatures for a cantonal initiative, the request is currently with the Grand Council.
Shrill sounds over here and over there
The project was born out of necessity in the classroom. The integrative school was introduced in German-speaking Switzerland around ten years ago. It stipulates that all children are taught together, including those who have difficulties or are experiencing them. The Basel teachers supported the project, one or the other might have had certain concerns about how the concept should work in the classroom, but there was no resistance. It was thought it was all a matter of resources; if enough remedial teachers would help out, it would all work out.
The teacher and curative teacher Marianne Schwegler was also positive about the integrative school at the beginning. But the past ten years have taught her and many of her colleagues a lesson. Schwegler has known the school for thirty years, she is Vice-President of the Voluntary School Synod in Basel-Stadt and is heavily involved in the support class initiative. This whirls up some dust in educational circles and is sometimes accompanied by shrill tones: Critics consider the initiators to be diehards, who in turn accuse the other side of integration fanaticism.
For Marianne Schwegler and her comrades-in-arms it is clear that the integrative school fails because of the realities. “We have an increasing number of children who are mentally challenged and who lack the basic skills to be able to learn. It’s about things like perseverance, impulse control or dealing with disappointments, which children usually learn in the first years of life in the family. It is enormously time-consuming when such skills have to be trained later at school, and in some cases it is no longer really possible.” How does Marianne Schwegler explain the large number of difficult children? Is it due to a careless upbringing? In another culture? A lot of things play together, and even more so in Basel: “An above-average number of families live here who are burdened in some way.”
Teachers versus bureaucrats
Basel-Stadt takes integration particularly seriously, more seriously than other cantons. Difficult children who disrupt the lesson massively and demand the full attention of the teacher are taught like everyone else in the normal class. How does this affect teaching? How are the normal students? It depends on what abnormalities a child has and how the class is made up, says Marianne Schwegler. “If a child has a learning disability but is socially strong, it can often be integrated well. The same usually applies to children with physical disabilities or those with Down syndrome. But if a child has behavioral problems and social-emotional problems, the whole class may suffer and learning time is lost because the teacher has to discipline an above-average amount.”
Curative teacher Marianne Schwegler.
It is obvious that the practitioners assess the situation much more critically than the theoreticians. For years, bureaucrats and scientists have presented the integrative school as a success. Not only did the special needs children benefit from it, but also the other pupils – a win-win model for everyone. However, this positive image is now getting more and more cracks. Surveys of teachers show that their assessment of the situation in the inclusive classroom is by no means as rosy as the experts who are further removed from school reality.
Unpopular statements
Basel-Stadt is also not the only canton where the sometimes alarming reports from the schools have led to political debates and where the reintroduction of small classes is being discussed. The Bernese Great Council has just spoken out in favor of more small classes, which can be interpreted as a kind of vote of no confidence in the integrative school.
A study (Balestra, Eugster, Liebert) that was awarded the Swiss Prize for Educational Research 2021, to which the Basel teachers refer, also made unpopular statements. The study analyzed the effects of including special needs students and concluded that special needs children negatively impacted the performance and progression of other students when there were more than three or four in a class. However, the effects are not the same for everyone: Good students are hardly affected, while weaker ones are severely affected.
So does the integrative school tend to lead to a leveling down? You can ask yourself this question, says Schwegler. “If the weaker half of the class has additional disadvantages, it can have a serious impact. High-performing students with a good environment at home can compensate for the deficits in the classroom, while the others cannot. They are then punished twice.”
The director of education is concerned
The supporters of the integrative school reject the Basel teachers’ initiative. They see the introduction of small classes as a throwback to earlier dark times when difficult children were pushed away, cared for and isolated without much ado. If you put children in special classes, they would be stigmatized and their future would be blocked, says Basel-Stadt education director Conradin Cramer. “Who, besides the school, will take care of these children?”
Marianne Schwegler thinks that’s exaggerated. If politicians and society don’t stigmatize the special offers, then they don’t bother the children either. “And they help them: a child who has trouble learning or behaving has a better chance of finding an apprenticeship later if they can train intensively in a small group and learn to get along socially.”
The Basel teachers may arouse some resentment with their initiative. Whether they will find enough support among the population is difficult to assess. Admittedly, supporters of integration also have to admit that the school in Basel-Stadt is not the best: Despite a lot of money being invested in the education system, the Basel schools get miserable grades in national comparisons.