Refugee children from Ukraine quickly find a suitable school in Switzerland. However, as new sociological research shows, there are still obstacles and problems in this area.
Almost a year ago, 18-year-old Sofia left behind her entire life in Odessa, this “pearl by the sea,” and fled to Switzerland because of the Russians’ aggressive war against Ukraine, sharing the sad fate of almost 75 thousand of her compatriots who ended up in the Confederation. Despite the tragic circumstances, she looks like an ordinary teenager – carefree and cheerful!
Sofia remembers her first day at the cantonal school in Schaffhausen well: “Everyone in my class was very, very kind to me. However, it was not easy – regardless of whether someone spoke standard German or Swiss dialect German, I did not understand anything.” In a very short time the situation has changed radically.
Today Sofia speaks surprisingly good German. She understands everything, including Swiss German, and has made friends. A little later, 17-year-old Nikita, also from Odessa, but from a different area of the city, came to the Schaffhausen cantonal school. They didn't know each other before. He also speaks German well, laughs and gestures actively.
He is impressed by how transparent and flexible the Swiss school system is. At first he was assigned to a completely different school, but after a while he was allowed to transfer to a cantonal-level school because the teachers noticed how quickly he learned German and how strong he was in mathematics.
“Teachers help you when they notice that you are really serious about studying mathematics,” Nikita says happily. He says that this opens up completely new opportunities, for example, to later study at a university, even having started his education not in a gymnasium, but in a real school. And this is incredibly cool! (a real school aims at a professional, not an academic career, as the Swiss “dual” education system is structured: below is the link, editor’s note in Russian/Ukrainian).
But as Pascale Herzog, associate professor at the Zurich Pedagogical Institute (Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich PHZH), says, not all children of Ukrainian refugees have such a smooth and successful school career. She is currently specifically studying the situation of such children in Swiss primary schools. The study is designed to last three years, but the first results are already available.
“The positive thing is that the enrollment of children from Ukraine in schools takes place without bureaucratic delays,” says Pascal Herzog. Thanks to a residence permit category S, they quickly gain access to the Swiss education system. Depending on the community, municipality or canton, such children were either taught separately at first in special classes, or even immediately integrated directly into regular classes.
One way or another: the system worked quite well, although it was temporarily short of teachers. Therefore, Pascal Herzog sees the main problem primarily in the children of refugees from other regions of the world affected by war. Things are not going so smoothly for them. “They have to go through the regular asylum procedure. Sometimes even several years pass before they are able to attend school. This leads to enormous difficulties. In this regard, Ukrainian children are very lucky.”
However, children from Ukraine also have enough problems. For example, they do not know how long they will be allowed to stay in Switzerland, whether they will be allowed to take final exams and study further in this country. These issues are not yet regulated in any way from the point of view of the migration legal framework in the long term. This uncertainty also worries Sofia and Nikita. “You can become an excellent student, and then one day they will still tell me, they say, the war is over, get ready, you should go back to Ukraine, all the best,” says Nikita.
Sofia feels the same. She, too, would like to live a normal life someday and even put down roots here. “I ask myself every day how long this will last. It is so hard". Sofia wants to do social work with children after school. Nikita wants to become an actor. Both would like to have perspective and hope that Switzerland can offer it to them.