Cantonal government acts to promote the teaching of French

A report published at the end of 2016 about the levels of French attained by pupils in the canton showed that, while they may fare better than pupils in other central Swiss cantons, more is needed to be done to encourage interest in the language. Since this time, the Conference of Directors of Education in these six central Swiss cantons have been looking at what precisely could be done.
 
For its part, the Zug cantonal government recognised the greater weight accorded to French in a new, albeit highly controversial, syllabus, which is gradually being introduced to schools in German-speaking cantons. Out of interest, since the summer of 2005, French has been taught from the fifth class only, whereas English has been taught from the third class.

One way the government is looking to improve the levels of French taught is through the introduction of new teaching materials, the topics covered being more relevant to pupils’ lives. It is hoped that, through this, teachers’ motivation will also be increased and to this end a specialist cantonal committee is publishing suggested teaching materials online.

The government feels that multi-lingual aspects of Switzerland need to be promoted more and that more should be done to expose schoolchildren to other languages spoken in the country, especially after it was made known that only 3% of them take part in exchanges. It was also felt more needed to be done to encourage language teachers to organise such exchanges. What is encouraging is that, in the coming academic year, the Cantonal School in Menzingen is planning to set up partnerships with schools in French-speaking and Italian-speaking Switzerland. Furthermore, one of the schools where pupils often go on to study at the Zug Teacher Training College (PH Zug) is also looking to organise individual and class exchanges with schools within Switzerland where other languages are spoken.

It is at the PH Zug that, at present, only 24 student teachers are planning to teach French, whereas 82 plan to teach English, hence the government is looking to changes to address this imbalance, too. However, it was thought making French compulsory for student teachers was not a good idea, not least as it was thought that, those teachers who went on to teach it because they had to, would not be the best at it and this would have an adverse effect on pupils learning it, too. The college itself is trying to encourage more students to take it by pointing out how much this would help when it came to applying for jobs.

On a related but separate issue, some cantonal parliamentarians feel that it is too much for some pupils to have to learn two foreign languages at primary school, though the government maintains there is no evidence for this.
 
Out of interest, this week sees the 80^th anniversary of the acceptance of Romansch, spoken in the canton of Graubünden, as one of Switzerland’s four official languages.