Primary
The obligatory school system usually includes primary education (Primarschule in German, école primaire in French and scuola primaria / elementare in Italian) and secondary education I (Sekundarstufe I in German, secondaire I in French and scuola secondaria / media in Italian). Before that, children usually go to kindergarten, but it is not required. The minimum age for primary school is about six years in all cantons but Obwalden, where it is five years and three months. The cantons Thurgau and Nidwalden allow five year olds to start primary school in exceptional cases. Primary school continues until grade four, five or six, depending on the school. Any boy or girl can take part in school if they choose to, but pupils are separated depending on whether they speak French, German or Italian.
Read more about this topic: Education In Switzerland
Famous quotes containing the word primary:
“If a madman were to come into this room with a stick in his hand, no doubt we should pity the state of his mind; but our primary consideration would be to take care of ourselves. We should knock him down first, and pity him afterwards.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)