Lucerne Education Directorate Requires Teaching Diploma for Homeschooling: What It Means for Families and Advocates

Homeschooling is booming in Lucerne. Because the Education Directorate suspects that this will lead to a decrease in the quality of education, they are now demanding a teaching diploma for private lessons. A homeschooling advocate fears some lawsuits.

The sunnier the days get, the more the schoolgirls long for the upcoming summer holidays. However, things will change for some Lucerne schoolchildren after the summer fun. Namely for those who are taught at home. As of August 2023, the Lucerne government will tighten the screws for issuing permits, as announced on Friday. Only those who have a level and professional education are allowed to teach privately. In other words: a teaching diploma. Until now, a high school diploma and proof of methodical and subject-specific skills were sufficient.

The Lucerne Education Directorate justifies the step with “quality assurance”: “The primary school education department (DVS) has found that the quality of private lessons has declined since the introduction of curriculum 21 in the 2017/18 school year,” says the website of the consultation. In addition, supervision has become increasingly difficult “as a result of various developments”.

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“The public school can no longer offer all children of today the right setting.”

Vreny Spichtig, President of the Association for Education at Home in the Canton of Lucerne

The Education Directorate fears that school-age children in Lucerne will no longer have equal opportunities. The majority of the official participants in the consultation spoke positively about the plans. Anyone who is still teaching their children privately will be given a grace period: they can still teach them until the end of primary school, even without a teaching diploma.

Homeschooling Club is very disappointed

The change is not well received by the association Education at Home Canton Lucerne. President Vreny Spichtig finds the change “very disappointing”, as she writes on request. Precisely because her association has shown the canton various possibilities and offers with a working group. For them, the new rule is not future-oriented: “Everyone is talking about individualization and child-friendly education. The public school can no longer offer all children of today the right setting.»

Spichtig does not accept the argument put forward by the Education Directorate to ensure the quality of education. “The DVS has not been able to prove this claim to this day. The families have requested access to the files and these deficiencies were not documented for any family that is a member of the Association for Education at Home in the Canton of Lucerne.”

Just to curb private lessons?

Rather, she suspects another reason behind the change: the increasing number of parents taking their children out of the public school system. And not just because of the pandemic. In the past ten years, the number of children in homeschooling has increased steadily, in the school year 2021/22 130 children were taught privately (zentralplus reported). In the last school year, the education department increased the requirements for private lessons: it limited the number of children that someone can teach privately to four (zentralplus reported).

For Spichtig it is clear: “The state simply does not want to give up the monopoly and recognize that there are three places of learning.” The public school that fits most students. Private schools, for parents who wouldn’t want to take on that extra responsibility. And private lessons, for parents who would trust themselves to educate their children.

According to Spichtig, who has taught her three grown-up children herself, the latter do not need a teaching diploma. “There is a very big difference between teaching my own children, who you know best as parents, and having to teach a whole class of 20 to 25 children.” Anyone can learn the curriculum 21 themselves. In addition, the homeschooling movement is very well networked and supports each other when necessary. In any case, half of the parents who teach privately are teachers themselves. “These teachers were lost to the state because they could no longer stand behind the public school system.”

Homeschooling Tourism and Litigation

What this decision means specifically for the families is difficult to say. However, resistance is inevitable. The homeschooling advocate can imagine that homeschooling tourism will now develop and families will move to more liberal cantons such as Bern or Aargau. According to Spichtig, this had already taken place before the current tightening.

“The canton of Lucerne continues to weaken itself as an innovative business location.” Her association recommends expats in particular to focus on other cantons. She could also imagine that some families would take the legal route, since the DVS was pushing them into illegality with the decision. “Which is absolutely not expedient for everyone.”