Switzerland’s largest party, the Swiss People’s Party (UDC/SVP), wants to curb the number of pupils in primary school classes who do not speak the language of instruction, arguing that rising immigration is undermining primary education, reported SRF. Meeting in Näfels in the canton of Glarus, party delegates approved a set of demands billed as an effort to save primary school.
According to the UDC/SVP, schools are increasingly failing to teach basic skills such as reading, writing and arithmetic. Benjamin Fischer, a member of the National Council, said teaching becomes difficult when a fifth of pupils in a class speak a foreign language and nearly impossible when the share reaches 30%.
The party is calling for a cap on the proportion of such pupils in each class. It also wants mandatory language tests before the school year begins. Children who fail would be placed in preparatory classes for an additional year. Parents, meanwhile, would be expected to cooperate with schools; persistent non-compliance could be sanctioned, potentially up to the withdrawal of residence permits.
The party also declared inclusive education a failure and called for the reintroduction of special classes. Alongside this, it wants a nationwide ban on mobile phones in schools and a renewed emphasis on traditional, non-digital subjects such as crafts, home economics, art and physical education.
Education policy, the party argues, should remain firmly in cantonal hands. The UDC/SVP plans to pursue its agenda through initiatives at the cantonal level and insists that the federal government should have no role in imposing standards on schools.
A darker political message
The delegates’ meeting opened with a speech by Marcel Dettling, the party’s president, who warned of what he called Switzerland’s decline. He cited immigration, asylum policy and political activism (“migrant mobs with fireworks”) as symptoms of a broader malaise and accused a corrupt elite of driving the country in the wrong direction. Reversing that trend, he argued, would require a change of political leadership. The UDC/SVP, he said, must strengthen its presence in parliament and in the Federal Council to halt what it portrays as a national slide.
More on this:
SRF article (in German)
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