Swiss students need to brush up ABCs

A new study shows that Swiss school children only average compared with their European neighbours Keystone Archive

Children in Swiss schools have only average reading skills compared with those in other developed countries, a new study shows.

The Swiss students fared worse than children in countries such as Finland, Australia and Canada when the Swiss Conference of Directors of Education tested some 10,000 students.

The study revealed that many Swiss children have a poorer knowledge of science than their counterparts abroad, although they are well versed in mathematics.

These are the initial findings of a wide-ranging study on the level of education in some 32 countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is the first international survey of its kind and focused primarily on the reading abilities of 15-year olds.

The study found that the reading abilities of 15-year-olds were average, with one in five Swiss teenagers able to understand only a simple text – and one third of them lacking even these limited skills.

Although Swiss pupils’ reading skills are roughly in line other participating PISA countries, the result places Swiss children a long way below the top-scoring countries, including the European nations of Finland and Ireland.

Little help for immigrants

Children of immigrant families, who make up around 20 per cent of all students in Swiss schools, were the lowest-ranking group in the reading exercises.

Approximately half these students could not understand the texts presented to them, or could understand only with considerable difficulty. However, the longer these pupils spent in Switzerland, the more familiar they became with the language used in school, and the better their performance became.

Education authorities now think that this significant minority is not being helped enough at an early age to learn one of the Swiss national languages.

“There is a problem on two levels with children of immigrant families. Their success depends in part on the education their parents have had and on the culture they come from,” says Ernst Buschor head of education for canton Zurich. “We urgently need more careful analysis of these groups and to offer them a better, more multi-cultural, pedagogical support.”

Beat Kemp, president of the Swiss Teachers Association, also believes more funding should be set aside to help children from disadvantaged social groups at an early age.

“We need more money for children from other countries, because if you can’t understand the language used in the schools, you won’t be able to get along in your other subjects,” says Kemp.

Social background

Children who performed better at reading came from homes where education was encouraged by professional parents. Although this trend was true of most OECD countries, it was most pronounced in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.

Likewise, traditional gender divisions were more acute in Switzerland, where girls fared much better in reading than boys, but were far worse in mathematics.

“To some extent, there is some truth to the stereotype of girls being better at languages and worse at maths,” says Kemp. “But we are certainly keen on promoting girls in science and math too, and there are school programmes in place to do that.”

No interest in reading

The survey found that the interest in reading is not very pronounced in Switzerland, with one-third of students not reading outside school.

“We have to encourage school children to read more – it’s essential to their education,” says Martine Brunschwig Graf, a cantonal parliamentarian in Geneva responsible for education.

“Children who come from homes with few books perform worse at school – but we can’t change their homes, so we need to promote books at home,” she says.

Too many languages?

One of the other reasons put forward for the poor reading skills in Switzerland may be that schools place too much emphasis on learning foreign languages from an early age.

“For weaker students, learning two foreign languages is probably too much – there should be a possibility of dispensation,” says Buschor.

“But learning languages can also be a motivator for learning, especially in the case of learning English,” he adds.

Unscientific youth

Switzerland’s average ranking in natural sciences jarred with its above-average ranking for mathematics.

“Part of the problem is that we teach sciences too late,” says Kemp. “Science lessons should begin at 11 rather than 16 years of age.”

In mathematics, innovative teaching methods were in part attributed to the good results.

“We need find new ways of teaching other subjects, because innovative teaching has worked in maths,” says Brunschwig Graf. “We can certainly learn a lot from other countries in this respect.”

by Vanessa Mock