Canton Zurich votes to abolish early French lessons in schools
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening:
Canton Zurich votes to abolish early French lessons in schools
Pupils in the Swiss canton of Zurich should in future only learn French from secondary school or high school onwards, the cantonal parliament has decided.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
On Monday, the cantonal parliament passed a motion to this effect from by 108 votes to 64.
The cantonal council instructed the Zurich government to create the necessary legal basis within two years to ensure that French is only taught from upper secondary school onwards – and not from Year five, as is currently the case.
The cantonal government had rejected the motion.
+ English as a common language in Switzerland: a positive or a problem?
“The early introduction of the second national language has not achieved its goal,” said parliamentary motion author Kathrin Wydler. Starting French lessons later should improve learning outcomes, promote motivation and avoid excessive demands.
For some time now, primary and lower secondary school teachers have been complaining about pupils’ modest knowledge of French at the end of primary school, argued the authors of the motion.
The teaching of French in primary schools is being called into question in other German-speaking cantons, such as Basel-Country, St Gallen, and Thurgau. The parliament of Appenzell Outer Rhodes adopted a motion to this effect last March.
More
Top teacher questions early French in Swiss schools
Translated from German by DeepL/mga
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 english@swissinfo.ch
More
The Théâtre du Jorat, Switzerland’s ‘sublime barn’
More
The difficult search for real Swiss cows
More
A Geneva-based global health foundation came close to ‘collapse’. Where were regulators?
More
Will Switzerland finally do away with imputed rental-value tax on homeowners?
More
Is Switzerland repeating England’s housing mistakes?
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.