An end to selection
Since the harmonisation of primary schools in Switzerland - i.e. the standardisation of the school system at primary school level - children in most cantons have been divided into different performance levels after the two kindergarten and six primary school years. But why does this selection take place? What is the purpose of this step? And is it future-orientated?
To answer these questions, we need to go back a little further in the history of the Swiss school system. In the early 17th century, the cantons of Bern and Zurich entrusted the municipalities with the organisation of schools. From 1750 onwards, the first efforts were made to tailor teaching methods to the learners and to orientate the subject matter towards practical life. These efforts were influenced by the educationalists Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.
Selection after sixth grade dates back to a time when teenage education was reserved for the privileged.
From around 1830, school laws were created in many cantons and teacher training centres were founded. This laid the foundations for the primary schools as it still exists today. After six years of primary school, a supplementary school followed and secondary schools were founded for higher demands. However, school attendance was not yet compulsory everywhere. Compulsory schooling was not established until the Federal Constitution of 1874. However, it did not regulate the duration of schooling. This was the responsibility of the cantons and municipalities.
Four classic functions
Selection after the sixth primary class has evolved historically and stems from a time when education in the teenage years was reserved for the privileged. This is how the retired Austrian professor of education Helmut Fend describes the four classic functions of school in his theory:
- Qualification: The school prepares the children for later life.
- Socialisation: Children are socially integrated. Just like in the family, desired behaviour is consciously and unconsciously trained at school.
- Legitimisation: Basic social values are taught at school. (For example, schools in Switzerland are based on Christian principles and democratic values).
- Selection: Pupils are sorted into school types and professions with different requirements.
Grades are not objective
While there is no selection in France and the Nordic countries, young people in Germany and Switzerland attend different types of schools after primary school, which in many places - but not everywhere - are based on external differentiation. This selection is based on grades.
Grades are not objective. The assessment made at school depends on many different factors. For example, the grade of an individual pupil depends on whether the class performs better or worse. And which teacher sets the grade. The individual development of a child also plays a major role. Spatial visualisation, for example, is heavily dependent on the maturity of the brain. A child's development is not linear and is by no means the same for all eleven-year-olds. Nevertheless, children are very often confronted with the same lesson content and measured against the same goals.
Lutz Jäncke, Professor of Neuropsychology, put it this way in an interview with this magazine in 2018: «The age of twelve is absolutely the wrong time for this selection. Brain research shows quite clearly that the brain is in a radical reorganisation phase at precisely that age. The frontal cortex is in turmoil, it's the worst phase in a child's life.»
It has also been proven that so-called structural racism has an influence on grades. For example, an essay written by a girl with a Central European name tends to be graded better than one written by a boy with a South-East European name. Andrea Müller therefore has a better chance of achieving a good essay grade than Mustafa Demiroglu, to give a fictitious name example.
Selection leaves its mark
Nevertheless, we rely on these set values and use them to make a selection that is then set in stone. Even if there is a certain degree of permeability between different levels of secondary school in some cantons (e.g. secondary school levels A, B and C in the canton of Zurich), this is not the case in the Gymnasium. In addition, young people are labelled in ways that are sometimes unjustified and have a lasting negative impact on their learning careers.
So if we use report card grades at the end of primary school and divide pupils into intermediate, secondary and grammar school classes, this does nothing to promote equal opportunities. In the «Neue Zürcher Zeitung» of 4 March 2023, Katharina Maag Merki, Professor of Theory and Empiricism of Educational Processes at the University of Zurich, criticises the fact that the early timing of selection means that the transfer to grammar school is already a central topic in discussions with parents in the fourth grade. However, a child's profile does not develop until later.
We should provide learning opportunities of varying difficulty within the classroom.
Time and again we look enviously at the good Pisa results in Finland. As described above, there is no selection there. And yet the young people achieve the educational goals, and obviously better than their Swiss peers.
Self-selected learning level
There are alternative models in which the different learning levels are taken into account. The Chur model, for example, is characterised by the fact that learners are offered tasks at three different levels of difficulty. These are chosen by the children and young people themselves. Studies by John Hattie, probably the most cited educational researcher of the last decade, support this model. Pupils' self-assessment of their own learning level ranks second in the list of factors influencing learning success.
So if we want to do really well in Swiss primary schools, we need to do away with the traditional models and abolish selection. Instead, we should provide learning opportunities of varying difficulty within lessons and the children and young people should choose the level themselves.
