Tuesday 21 July 2020

2019-2020 Epilogue: The Mystery of the Missing Zeugnis


Tuesday 14th July 2020, second working day after the end of the school year in Kanton Zürich.

When C left primary school, 7 years ago, he brought home the entire contents of his desk.

If you have read any of the previous posts, you will know that his Klasse 4-6 years were a little…….turbulent…… and although disappointed with how he was streamed into Sek, he was relieved to be leaving the teacher he had had for 3 years.

At that point, July 2013, we were in the middle of building work at home, with tonnes of stuff shoved in the loft, the cellar, the balcony and anywhere there was space for it. The house was completely upside down and we were living in chaos.

We eventually sorted out all the stuff and got the house back in ordnung, but we never found his Grade 6 report, and I spent years wondering what on earth happened to it, as there was plenty of other stuff re-found. But never his report card, which was disappointing, since as report cards go, it was a reasonably good one.

Today, 7 years later, it has arrived in the post, with a note from the Schulverwaltung:
“Ihr Zeugnis der Primarstufe wurde im Schulhaus gefunden. Auf diesem Grund senden wir Ihnen die Unterlagen zu und wünschen Ihnen eine schöne Sommerzeit».

(Your primary school report was found in the schoolhouse. For this reason, we send you the document and wish you a nice summer).

I’ve not stopped laughing all morning. Where else in the world would the local school authorities bother to do that?

All’s well that ends well.

For now, at least.

2019-2020 – Education in the time of Coronvirus


Friday, 11th July 2020

Where were we at the beginning of the school year? Oh yes, that’s right. Joyfully oblivious to what would happen when 2019 became 2020.

J was back working in the bar by the end of October, after his work-related accident in June 2019, and trying to find some direction, which he eventually did in February. I will return to this later.

C was in his last year of his apprenticeship, and therefore the last of his Berufschule (“Profession School”) years. By some miracle he started to realise that if he actually did some work for tests, he usually passed them, reasonably well. (How old was he then? Yes, 18). I was still focussed on being home from work each day to make sure that he actually did his homework (which was still, frustratingly, going on in the main family room) but I knew that this school year would require all manner of patience and tenacity. It wasn’t so much that he needed to be babysat with the homework, but him knowing that I was home to be aware that he was actually doing it. An awareness that we were supporting him without trying to be controlling, if that makes sense. It was a lot of rote learning, so he usually had some worksheets to scan that I then blocked out the answers, reprinted and put into plastic sheets, so that he could practice and repeat the answers. Yes, I know that’s ridiculous for an 18 year old, but I was prepared to do nearly anything to support him getting through this year successfully.

At Berufschule generally students don’t really do traditional subjects, they do apprenticeship-specific subjects, and as a Polymechaniker he was doing A Lot Of Technical Stuff. It’s A Very Technical Apprenticeship, which can be used as a fantastic base to do all sorts of things in the future. However, school hasn’t always been his thing, and he wasn’t very happy about the trigonometry and maths, generally. As he pointed out to me later in the year “Mum. Some of these subjects are actually quite hard. And so are the tests”. Fair point, Boychild. He supplemented his maths with the occasional foray onto Khan Academy, which seemed to help. Just before Christmas, he sat the dreaded “Semesterschlusstest”, which was exams in all his Berufschule subjects, to determine his 7th Semester grades for his report card. And passed. And. Breathe. Part 1.

For his ABU Grade in Semester 7, C had to produce a written extended essay - about 3,000 words, such a quantity of which he’s never had to write in DE before. Ever. ABU is the abbreviation for Allgemeinbildenden Unterricht, which is basically general studies, but covers such brilliant topics as “how to complete your tax return” (essential for Swiss of all ages) and “the Swiss political system and how to vote” (also essential knowledge for Swiss of all ages). They were given a topic, which was “Risks” and he chose to write on the risks of journalism, since he has a cousin who is a professional journalist in Iraq. They had a clear rubric and structure, together with a couple of sessions looking at research methods, and he made a plan to complete the work, which he stuck to. He was pleased with the final product but also had to do a presentation on it to the class, which he found harder, since public speaking is not his favourite thing. But he got through all that fine, which was a relief. And. Breathe. Part 2.

And then 2019 became 2020 and along came COVID-19.

Switzerland officially locked down at midnight on March 16th. OH and I came home to work, which required a rapid remodelling of the spare room to organise a dedicated workspace for OH. J was furloughed. C, however, continued to go to work, and was fortunate enough to live close enough to use his bike, thereby avoiding public transport. The rest of the staff in his factory went onto short hours, but the apprentices didn’t. But let’s be honest, it’s a bit difficult to work from home when your equipment takes up the space of several rooms and weighs many tonnes. His Scouting activities all paused, but the local Musikschule were fantastically efficient at delivering online instrumental lessons and band rehearsal via Zoom almost immediately, which was great, and provided a little more normalcy.

After a strange couple of weeks, his Berufschule managed to get some online teaching sorted out, and he was able to go to school from his bedroom. The entire class were never all there, though, and I was shocked by the number of students never bothering to login and register in class.

He had been due to sit his mock final theoretical exams in March, but they were abandoned by the school, which was actually a shame, as he could have benefitted from the experience of sitting an exam to achieve something “real” and figure out where he needed to improve.

Early in April the Swiss Government announced that this year’s final year apprentices would sit their practical exams (a bit of a misnomer, since most of them stand for a living), but not their theory exams. Their theory marks for the apprenticeship final would be based on an average of their previous semester grades over the length of the apprenticeship. Disappointment about missing out on the sitting-a-real-exam-experience quickly turned to relief when we realised that this meant he couldn’t now fail the whole thing. And. Breathe. Part 3.

We then spent weeks trying to get the dates of the practical exam from the Lehrmeister at work, and eventually were told that this would “only” be 40 hours of exam, instead of the possible 120 hours. 40 hours of practical! For a 19 year old! Anyway, thankfully that all took place in May, with a presentation to an expert a fortnight later about the week’s work and what he had had to make, and how he had done it. However, in the middle of the 5-day-long practical exam, the Berufschule did a U-turn about the theoretical exam, and decided to hold the mock theory exam as the method of obtaining the Semester 8 theory marks. At 2 weeks’ notice.

C had a bit of a meltdown and then pulled himself together when we pointed out to him that he’d already done a lot of learning for the mock before it was originally cancelled. So he sat the theory exam, and got the best grades he’s had, for his Semester 8 report card. Massive relief. And in the same week he heard that he had passed his practical, though we didn’t get the overall grade for another 5 weeks. And. Breathe. Part 4.

He did manage to have a “Schulabschluss” (school leaving party) but neither parents nor Lehrmeisters were invited. So at least he got to say goodbye to his teachers and school friends. And he picked up his final report, which confirmed that he had passed his apprenticeship with a decent mark. And. Breathe. Deeply. Possibly even falling asleep.

The icing on the cake? He has a job. A proper one, as a Polymechaniker at the factory where he trained, in the next town. Which means he can work for a couple of years, get some great work experience, and save for a couple of years while deciding in which direction to go next.

What was going on with J while all this happened? Well, C had had a morning at Berufschule in January, where the final year apprenticeship students were presented with the many and varied options to continue in their education. One of these was to return to school, at “KME – Kantonale Maturitätschule für Erwachsene” – or, as C described it, “Gymi for adults”. Yes, if a student has successfully completed his/her apprenticeship and wants to then go for the academic route, they then have the possibility to go back to school. Literally. And work to attain the Swiss Federal Matura, thus then having a route to university. Whether or not they need to pass an exam to get into this school depends on the type of their apprenticeship and whether or not they have already done BMS (and their BMS final grade). An open day was held at KME at the end of February, just before lockdown, with both boys attending. J decided this was what he wanted, and after applying and an interview, he was accepted. He was furloughed shortly after this, so has had another 4 months off…….. but has been revising French, Maths and Biology ready to start school again in August. He’s read Camus in the original and has been practising Algebra. He’s not quite sharpened his pencils yet, but one step at a time, eh.

It’s quite normal to continue with part work and part education ad infinitum, it seems. Where I am currently working there are several staff in their 20s who work around 80% and are at college the other 20% – and this is years after the apprenticeship stage.

So, a dozen years after our first transition to Swiss education, have we reached our destination? Not our final one, I don’t think. Both young men have the essential bit of paper saying that they have completed the first official further education, which means that other doors can now open, together with, at the age of 21 and 19, 6 and 4 years’ respectively of actual proper work experience. It’s been tough, at times, very, very tough. It’s not where we originally thought they would be, and that’s OK, because we are so very proud of what they have achieved. If anything, they have more paths open to them, having taken the apprenticeship route, than if they had done gymi first time round, which only fast tracks you to university and doesn’t offer other choices.

So, it is finished; after all that breathing, I’m going for a little lie down.