2024 - Ukrainian school children - Schools face a mammoth task

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Hundreds of children from Ukraine go to school in Switzerland. The will is great, as is the challenge.

Their names are Ilia, Timofi and Ivanka, they are between five and seven years old and come from the Ukraine. The children have been attending classes at the Guttannen primary school in the Bernese Oberland for two weeks. They sit a little hesitantly in the morning circle and count to ten – in German. If they don’t know what to do, the new Swiss Gspändli will help them.

“Cool, now there are more children to play with,” beams 6-year-old Tonja. “It’s a process of growth,” says teacher Andrea Scherling. It is now even more chaotic and restless than usual. Her biggest challenge: “That I can respond to everyone as they deserve.”

My job is to please everyone.

It’s a challenge that schools across the country are having to face. Thousands of people, mainly women and children, are fleeing the war in Ukraine. Many of them also come to Switzerland. They all need a roof over their heads, and for children it is also important that they can go back to school quickly.

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Integrate special class or children? Many cantons rely on the integrative model whenever possible.

SRF

The schools mainly rely on two models for teaching: either the Ukrainian children go straight to regular classes, as in Guttannen, or they first attend a so-called reception class, as in Küsnacht ZH.

A survey of the German-speaking Swiss cantons shows that the majority of them want to integrate the children into the existing regular classes. In the Zurich city for example, around 250 Ukrainian children are currently being taught. About a third of them attend so-called catch-up classes, two-thirds go straight to the regular class, i.e. to normal classes together with local children.

“After being assigned to a community, the children are immediately admitted to a regular class,” he writes Canton of Solothurn. There are also German courses. It is also possible to be admitted to a class for foreign speakers.

Even Uri basically relies on the integration of the children into the existing classes and also the Canton of Schwyz is on this line, “only a few integration classes were opened, it says there. Schaffhouse has written to retired teachers and students to take care of the children.

St. Gallen runs on two tracks for the schooling. The local school authorities would accept the children either in regular classes or in an integration class.

in the canton of Grisons It is important where the children are housed. Those who live with their parents in a cantonal collective accommodation are taught there in the home school. Children who are housed privately in a municipality, for example, attend the local school. So far, between 50 and 70 children have been enrolled in school in the canton.

in the Valais a little more than 100 children from Ukraine are currently going to school. We are preparing to take on more students. In addition to additional classrooms, it is also being clarified whether additional staff would be available. One is also looking for the adult Ukrainians who have entered the country.

The follows a similar approach Canton Bern with a reporting platform where Ukrainian people can register as teaching or class assistants. The challenges of the shortage of teaching staff would increase.

In the pavilion of the Erb School in Küsnacht near Zurich, the Ukrainian students are among themselves and cramming German. “New children come every day,” explains school president Klemens Empting. Because there are too many for the regular classes, Küsnacht has created a separate class for them. They stay there until they can speak German well enough to attend regular classes.