Getting Involved in Your Child’s Education

This article is part three in the series, Educating Your Children in Switzerland, which reports on challenges with the education in Switzerland from the perspectives of the mothers who experienced them. In Part One: The Local System and Part Two: Challenges with Private Schools, I discussed challenges and here in part three, I will focus on solutions and options for parents.

Volunteering

Innovative concept schools like bilingual and new day schools may respond to parental offers of help in the classroom. Volunteering to help with a class or to represent parents’ views is easier in an international private school setting, when compared to local schools.

More formally and on a larger scale, parents report mixed results from becoming involved with either private or public school-wide parents’ associations. However, the advantage of organising events at the school or parents’ socials is that you have a chance for direct contact with teachers and managers inside the school, and can learn more about the school culture and “the way things get done” there. One classroom representative I spoke with described her influence in the school as minimal, while acknowledging that teachers confided in her about internal issues. Sometimes active parents – especially those on the board – are asked to help if there is a predictable crisis looming at the school. Normally the only help a parent volunteer can offer is to act as a representative and monitor parental feeling about issues you cannot control. On the other hand, parents’ associations provide valuable networking opportunities, and parents individually contribute to the crucial but intangible reputation of a school through the references they give based on their personal experiences.

Another advantage of engaging in a school community is the emotional and social support such networks can bring, not to be underestimated in situations where expats often do not have family living nearby and know no one on arrival here. One mother I interviewed recently said frankly, “Expect to be depressed in your first year, but know you are resourceful and will find a way to get through it with sheer determination.”

Indicators of School Problems

If there are internal management issues that you are unaware of, you can be sure they will visit you at some point in your child’s school career. Situations like a “trigger-happy” headmaster/principal, blatant nepotism, or low staff morale will contribute to a high staff turnover. This in turn creates problems for the schoolchildren, especially if your child is at a crucial stage in her schooling when a favourite teacher has to leave. Furthermore, sacking outspoken teachers gives children the message that disagreeing with authority figures might get them into big trouble.

Small schools allow for more close scrutiny than large schools, but the question is how to influence the real decision makers. Very new schools and Swiss private schools may have less established parents associations, where you can get to know the issues first hand. If you are allowed to observe a class, you might spot warning signs, such as a teacher raising his voice with a child who appears not to understand him, which is a sure sign of a lack of sensitivity to children! Obvious signs, such as teachers who answer the phone in the middle of teaching, are easier to spot than intimidating bullies or inexperienced teachers.

Other parents are sources of information and can help you predict strengths and weaknesses at particular schools. You can ask teachers for parents’ contact details. On a public forum such as the Yahoo! Families-in­Zurich group or the English Forum, you can post a message to make contact with parents from a particular school to get confidential references.

Children with Individual Support Needs

Some categories of special learning needs have well-established means of in-school support at both primary and secondary levels. There are some, though, that require an assessment outside of school and then you, the parents, will need to become a temporary “project manager” to get school agreements, coordinate a suitable package of care and organise integrated learning support. You might also be required to take your child to therapy sessions during the school day and act as a daily facilitator for messages between the therapist and teachers.

It is difficult to get your child seen by English­-speaking specialists in Switzerland for regular treatment unless your health insurance company, your community or you yourself are willing to pay. Do not assume that insurers are obligated to pay. Between doctors and insurance companies there are favourite doctors and favourite insurance companies; in other words, you can ask a doctor or pharmacist with a bill for your child’s medication in your hand and they will tell you, “Oh, that company never pays up” – which fact it would have been nice to know before starting the process of assessment. Even if private schools have in-house therapists, you may still have to pay for their sessions with your child.

Whatever your child’s individual needs in the classroom, the consensus on issues that challenge the professional limits of teachers and care assistants is:

• Be prepared to put a lot of time into finding the right solution for your child. Do not expect a school to have exactly the resources he or she needs. Expect to be your child’s advocate for years to come.
• Be prepared to pay, if others have no obligation to do so, for the appropriate professional help. You may be able to change insurers in the fullness of time, but early prompt intervention has the best results in most cases, if your aim is to keep your child at a mainstream school and not send him or her into an alternative or special school.
• Get yourself some support, from a therapist or counsellor or support group, possibly for both parents, as having a child with special needs puts a huge strain on mothers in particular and marriages in general. You may also find your familiar frame of reference for treatment needs to change in this new environment, such as relying on school services to provide a solution rather than changing things at home to accommodate your child’s needs. While a medical or psychological diagnosis can help some families to deal with an unfamiliar condition, it can also lead you to see the problem as one that can be “fixed,” rather than accepting the implications for family life on an ongoing basis. At the end of the day parenting is a part-time job, in terms of time, at the very least; in some cases you may have to accept that it takes centre stage, and work or another part of the delicate family balance will take a hit.

The author would like to thank all those who contributed their experiences to this series, in the interest of helping others in similar situations to get through various challenges as bravely and stoically as humanly possible.

By Monica Shah

Monica is Head of Children First, an international non­profit nursery school in Zurich.

Illustration by Justyna Chudzinska