A typical day at secondary school: in the morning, a lesson each in maths, French, history and chemistry. After an hour's lunch break, the day continues with Italian, geography, PE and physics. It's quite possible that there'll be a test to sit in one or more of these lessons. At home, homework and revision for further tests keep you from enjoying some well-deserved downtime with your classmates. There's no doubt that secondary school – or «Gymi» or «Kanti», as it's known in different regions – is a tough time – except for a few gifted pupils who breeze through the wide range of subjects and the pace of learning.
Secondary school is also a time when young people vastly broaden their horizons, when they know more about a wider range of topics than at any other stage of their lives: from Bohr's atomic model to the role of the Jacobins during the French Revolution, and from integral calculus to the Latin u-declension. It is a time when one forms opinions on many things, engages in discussion, makes plans, soaks up knowledge and is keen to share it. And alongside all that, one studies for exams time and again, whether one is good at the subject or not, cramming hundreds of French or Latin vocabulary words, pulling an all-nighter because one started the term paper too late.
Thinking in terms of connections
When asked what it takes to succeed at grammar school, Julie Baumann, a pupil at a grammar school in Winterthur, says: «You have to understand how things fit together. Memorising isn't enough. And you have to be able to cope with pressure.» The pressure always builds up at the end of each term, with one exam following another. Anyone who fails to achieve the required average mark is placed on a provisional basis for the following term. If the next report card also falls short of the requirements, the year must be repeated. Repeating a year twice is not permitted. Then the grammar school career is over.
And what are secondary school pupils supposed to learn? Gisela Meyer Stüssi, a Latin and Greek teacher at the Freies Gymnasium Bern, summarises: «On the one hand, pupils must be academically and intellectually ready for university. On the other hand, a deeper level of social maturity is a goal. This refers to a broad knowledge base and the foundations needed to take on socially important roles later in life. It is not just about knowledge that can be tested point by point.»
«You have to understand the bigger picture. Memorising things isn't enough. And you have to be able to cope with pressure.»
Julie Baumann, a sixth-form student from Winterthur
Meyer Stüssi is Vice-President of the Association of Swiss Secondary School Teachers and keeps a close eye on developments in secondary schools. The fact that trainee primary school teachers, nursery school teachers and physiotherapists now also need a Matura has brought new social groups into secondary schools. «That has been good for the atmosphere in secondary schools,» she says. Meyer Stüssi dismisses the idea of a general rush to secondary schools and a «Matura at any cost» mentality. Referring to a study by the education historian Lucien Criblez, she says: «Young women account for the lion's share of the rise in the Matura rate. Previously, few of them attended grammar school; today, they are even slightly in the majority. And young people from rural areas have caught up.»