Swiss School?

[JoFurniss]

Dear all,

We're an English family living in Switzerland, anticipating a possible move to Singapore next year. I've been looking at the Swiss School, which would be a good option for my children as they could continue learning German/SwissGerman, which would make it easier for them to come back to Switzerland in the future (which is likely). But I can't find much information about it on forums and it doesn't seem to be covered (unless I'm missing something) in the International Schools Guide. I guess that's because it's pretty small?

So I wonder if anyone has any experience of the Swiss School?

many thanks in advance, best wishes,

Jo

[SCinSG]

Hi Jo,

You're right that the Swiss School is not covered in the International School Guide. I think it's pretty small and also its primary language of instruction is not English (the guide covers primarily English-language schools), although this is admittedly a bit unclear from looking at their website.

Another option if you want to keep up your kids' German may be the German European School.

[Pink girl]

Hi, I was also going to mention the German European school- GESS. They have teaching in both English and German. If I remember rightly, they are reviewed in the guide you are talking about.
My sister in law lives on the same road as the Swiss school and has been in singapore for 15 years. She only has good things to say about the Swiss school if that helps,. She has a 6 and 3 year old, so is well informed of all the schools having already done the research!

Hope this helps.

[Two Ton Tony]

I'm sorry for being late in replying but hopefully you're still coming over.

The swiss school is based in central Singapore in an area called Bukit Timah, very much the suburbs of Sing.

It has around 400 pupils from kinderkripper/pre school to about 11 years at which point the kids are tested and automatically enrolled at UWC (a larger but probably number 1 school in Asia I am told).

The school teaches German and English side by side with two language streams, our 3yo only spoke EN and has been in EN classes with a hint of DE to start with. He is now 6 and speaks good DE and is mostly taught in DE. Our 7yo, now 10 was fluent DE and is only taught DE, he gets taught some EN as whilst spoken he is great, his written was poor.

Most kids are 50:50 e.g. One swiss parent, one english/Germn/Dutch/singaporean/Thai/Indian etc parent so duel languages are the norm. The kids that struggle he most are the CH speakers from the valleys who've never heard a fireign word in their lives!

The curriculum is CH (St Gallen I think) and all kids are Gymnasium standard or expected to be. At UWC there is a Swiss stream though I would assume this means you also miss out on the IB qualification, though I guess there's ways to fix this - after all, this isn't Switzerland!

Enrolment land fee's count owards Swiss Club membership if that is attractive.

Positives - we're pretty happy with the school.

Negatives -
English Dept has no curriculum which means one of my boys has read 150 books this year and is still on level 4 punctuation.
Start Times - Change every year, gives me a feeling that they cannot plan, alternatively, maybe things are so tight with class siizes they they have o f**k us about. It is OK though in Sing it is permissable to announce to your boss "because of the school run, I can't get o the office until 10am for the next year". Expect 7.30 - 9 as your kids start at school.
Lunches - the reason all the timings are screwed is because the school has no canteen, in short, it's 11am packed lunches for all and the bigger kids (who I guess can starve longer) stay later...
End Times - because of the lunch and starvation quotient, kids will come home somewhere between 12 and 3. This changes, like the start times, annually. I presume you're not a ingle parent? Because the school will assume you're a two parent, one worker family.
Bus Service - the x000 a year you spend on your kids commute will be the hidden extra cost of schooling. Expect to also be f**cked around by these geniuses but at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that the bus companies do multiple schools so it is at least unavoidable. The failure of the Swiss School to keep it's 2012-13 bus company however seems to be an unescessary disturbance, I presume there's a backhander element at play, but maybe I've just been in Asia too long.

Overall - despite the negatives, very happy with this school. Good value, good education, good kids. Parents are happy generally.

[Somers]

@TTT,

Did you consider the German school? If so, why did you opt to go with the Swiss school instead?