After Zurich, St. Gallen votes to relegate French to secondary school

The aim was not to abolish French-language teaching, but to postpone it by two years, legislators said. Keystone-SDA

Following in the footsteps of the Zurich parliament, the St. Gallen cantonal parliament voted to postpone the teaching of French to secondary school. The vote contradicts the school harmonisation agreement (HarmoS).

Teaching a second national language at primary school is an additional burden for pupils, with no proven long-term benefits, according to a motion adopted by the St. Gallen parliament on Wednesday. The Swiss People’s Party, the Radical-Liberals, the Centre and Centre-Left (Social Democrats, Greens and Liberal-Greens) groups were behind the motion, which was passed by 88 votes to 24, with one abstention.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Basic skills need to be reinforced at school, some legislators argued. The aim was not to abolish French-language teaching, but to postpone it by two years, from the 5th year of primary school to the first year of secondary school. A minority, however, warned, in vain, against the risk of “browbeating” French-speaking Switzerland and “breaking something”.

A Green-Liberal representative spoke in French, to the objection of a People’s Party colleague. However, his request to ban the use of French in the legislature was rejected by 72 votes to 27, with nine abstentions.

Postponing English-language learning rejected

An amendment tabled by three Social Democrats, the Greens and the Green-Liberals called for English to be taught in secondary schools instead of French. It was rejected.

The St. Gallen government is now due to present an amendment to the law specifying that French will be taught from the 7th school year (9th year of HarmoS). Education Minister Bettina Surber stressed that teaching French at compulsory school was absolutely essential.

Incompatibility with HarmoS

If sending French back to secondary school is incompatible with the HarmoS agreement, the St. Gallen government will have to call for the agreement to be amended. The agreement stipulates that two non-native languages, including one national language, must be taught at primary school.

In the German-speaking cantons that do not border French-speaking Switzerland, English is currently taught from year 3 and French from year 5. In cantons neighbouring the French-speaking region, the reverse is true.

Possibility of a law on languages

Last March, the parliament of Appenzell Outer-Rhodes also adopted a motion calling for the teaching of French to be moved back to secondary school. Early September, Zurich’s parliament did likewise, by 108 votes to 64. Only the left rejected the motion, which was drafted by the Swiss People’s Party, the Greens and the Evangelicals.

A few hours after the vote, Christophe Darbellay, president of the Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education, spoke of “a very serious knife cut to national cohesion”.

On the same day, the federal education minister, Elisabeth Baume-Schneider, expressed her concern over a decision that “calls into question the compromise on languages and questions the way we live together”. She announced that she would propose that the Swiss government consider a binding law on national languages, should other cantons follow Zurich’s lead.

‘Attack’ on French in Bern

The teaching of French at primary school is also being called into question in other German-speaking cantons, such as Basel-Country and Thurgau, where motions to this effect have been tabled, as well as in Schwyz, where the issue is currently occupying the minds of the school authorities.

Even in the canton of Bern, which has a French-speaking minority, the Liberal-Greens have tabled a motion based on the Zurich text. On Wednesday, the Social Democrat sections of Bienne and Chasseral reacted by denouncing this “attack on the teaching of French” which “is perhaps even more serious than in other cantons”.

On September 2, the parliament of Neuchâtel adopted a resolution deploring the decision to abandon the teaching of French at primary school and calling on its Zurich counterpart to reverse its decision, “which threatens national cohesion”.

What is your opinion? Join the debate:

Translated from French with DeepL/gw

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail].