Recently we moved to the Canton Bern in Switzerland.
As we are a homeschooling family I found that this seems to be much more problematic than it was in the UK.
We need to find us a teacher who is willing to supervise us, as neither of us has a teaching degree - like that makes any difference.
Furthermore, it seems that we will have to resort to school-at-home now, which is not something I am looking forward to.
I started with school-at-home when we had just taken the children out of school as I had no clue how else to do it and this was a disaster. The kids weren't happy and neither was I. It was way way way too stressful.
We continued with unschooling and that proved to be very successful and didn't cause any stress. The result is that the kids are way way way "ahead" in some area's and "behind" in other area's.
In the past here in this canton children who were homeschooled had to be tested yearly based on the cantonal curriculum and they weren't allowed to to fail or they had to go back to school. They also had to show their worked, again needing to follow the work required bythe cantonal curriculum.
No wonder there are few homeschoolers around here.
They changed this law in August 2008, but did put the requirement of having a teacher supervise when you do not have a teachers degree (a full-time study of 4 years, not possible to do with distance learning - have thought about getting it), though nobody knows what this teacher will have to do.
Somehow it sounds more free depending on the teacher you choose, but it did get me pretty jumpy.
One of my kids is severely dyslexic and has a load of trouble with reading and writing, though she speaks 3 languages fluently. This could be used against us. She is also on the autistic spectrum, no clue how they feel about that.
In total where we live, our apartment and all its really nice, but this part has gotten me stressed for the moment. And it has resulted in me thinking about this school-at-home more and more unfortunately.
Well..... if all else fails we can always move to Aargau, which seems to be the most free canton of all.
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Welcome to Switzerland, Diana!
Vaud is a very liberal canton too. I am currently translating the Vaud school laws and the curriculum, as even though we intend to unschool, I am aware that there may be more hoops to jump through, and I want to see how this can possibly fit into an unschooling ethos.
Have you asked on the homeschooling yahoo groups for experiences of Bern people? A lot of people are extremely curriculum based, but they might have an idea of how to pick a 'good' teacher.
Hope it works out for you.
Btw, I am going to be posting some trips on the yahoo group soon (when I sort myself out). Would love to meet up with you.
Clare
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