How a school dispute kept the authorities on their toes for over a year.
Because twins are sent to two different schools, they stay away from class.
When school starts again in the city of Zurich after the 2023 summer holidays, two chairs remain empty in a fourth grade class. The children who stayed away from class were eleven-year-old twins at the time. They won’t come back either. The mother went to court so that her children could attend another school.
Parents who oppose school authorities’ decisions: This phenomenon has increased. An indication of this is the number of appeals that have been lodged against the results of the Gymi exam in recent years. According to the Education Directorate, this happened 81 times in 2024, almost as often as in the two peak years of 2018 and 2019.
But the authorities also have to deal with supposedly long distances to school, school suspensions for vacations in the Maldives and poor grades. Or, a classic: with school assignments.
In the current case, the mother has clear ideas about which school the twins should attend and which should definitely not. She takes her concerns all the way to the administrative court.
As soon as they are separated, the children no longer want to go to school
The court’s decision now shows that the mother has been keeping the school staff busy for a long time.
In 2020 she fled to Switzerland with the twins – it is not clear from which country. The children attend a reception class together for almost two years, after which they are moved individually to a second and a third regular class. That’s where the problems begin. The children repeatedly stay away from class because they suffer from being separated from each other. This is how the mother describes it.
Shortly before the summer holidays last year, the twins were examined in the child psychiatry department at the Zurich University Psychiatric Hospital (PUK). It turns out that the children were affected by potentially traumatizing experiences as well as difficult conditions before and after fleeing with their mother. The separate lessons probably put additional strain on the twins. Therefore, attending school together is considered “probably sensible”. This is what it says in an investigation report.
In fact, the children are then allowed to attend fourth grade together. But the twins no longer want to go to school, not even together. They are afraid that the assigned school building will remind them of the separation from each other, explains the mother. One of the two children used to attend after-school care.
She wants to send the twins to another school. But the responsible district school authority rejects the mother’s objection. The same applies to the district council, to which the woman turns in the next instance.
In a conversation last fall, the school district authority suggested that the mother temporarily send the children to individual lessons and later transfer them to another school within the school district.
But the mother has other plans. She organizes places for the children in the PUK day clinic. The goal is to build a daily structure outside of home. In addition, further support measures for the children should be decided. This is stated in a PUK report. But the twins only stay in the clinic for four days – probably due to stress during the journey.
The clinic states in the report that the question arises as to what extent schooling is even possible in the medium term and whether day-care treatment can be successful.
Individual lessons until the new place of residence is determined
Authorities and mother agree: The twins cannot return to the school to which they were assigned. A different solution is needed. With the mother’s consent, the school district authority ordered individual lessons for the children in another school building this spring.
The family has to move out of their apartment in the fall. As soon as the new address is known, the children should definitely be assigned to a new school – and they should attend the same class. So the mother’s demands were met.
With this step, the school authorities essentially recognized the complaint, the administrative court now states in its decision. It should therefore be written off as irrelevant.
The school authorities must cover the court costs totaling 1,220 francs.
Parents are not always successful when they go to court on behalf of their offspring. This is shown by an example from last year. A couple of parents from the canton of Zurich filed a complaint with the administrative court because they did not agree with their daughter’s school assignment. After the summer holidays, she was supposed to attend a different secondary class than her classmates from primary school.
But the court dismissed the complaint. The girl’s desire to continue going to school with her friends was understandable, she noted in the verdict. But the wishes of students or parents with regard to allocation are not a decisive criterion.
The parents accepted the verdict. And from then on the child attended the class to which he was assigned.
Decision VB.2023.00547 of July 3, 2024, not yet legally binding.
