After the PLR, the SVP is also planning parliamentary interventions on schools, writes the “NZZ am Sonntag”. Yesterday, at the assembly of SVP delegates in Aarau, Res Schmid, head of the Nidwalden public education department, noted that “too many things are wrong” in our schools. The party’s future interventions would focus, among other things, on the reintroduction of special classes for children who are slower or with behavioral problems, or integration classes for students who do not have sufficient command of one of the three national languages. A detailed document on the planned education reforms will be drawn up this winter by Zurich national councilor Benjamin Fischer, in collaboration with cantonal education officials.
“Too many children do not know how to read and calculate correctly at the end of their schooling,” Thierry Burkart, the president of the PLR, lamented to the media on Friday in Bern. Schools would be exhausted, weakened by numerous bad reforms. Changing this is “urgent”, according to the Aargau resident who had already announced that he wanted to reform the school system last June. He thus presented the five main demands for the cantonal sections of the PLR, including, at the top of the list, the creation of special classes for children with learning difficulties. He also asks, among other things, to ban mobile phones in class and more political neutrality in education.
The left is unenthusiastic about the right-wing offensive against the school system, described as a return to the last century by State Councilor Franziska Roth (PS/SO). “Schools must respond to the diversity of society and welcome children, not separate them. This recipe works if the resources allocated are sufficient, as science has clearly shown,” she emphasizes.
The PLR does not exclude a popular initiative
The PLR does not rule out acting through a popular initiative if its cantonal efforts to change the country’s school system do not bear fruit.
The party also announced the establishment of an e-mail address for the population: “We call on all citizens to commit with us for compulsory schooling with a future. Anyone who recognizes other problems should contact the general secretariat of the Swiss PLR,” the party indicates on its website.
