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Preparation for gymnasium exam necessary for passing

Many public school teachers consider separate preparation for the gymnasium entrance exam for the long-term gymnasium necessary in order to pass the exam, as the regular lessons at the primary school do not prepare the students for the entrance exam to the gymnasium (ZAP). This was the result of an investigation as part of a Master’s thesis at the University of Zurich.

Preparation for the gymnasium can take place in the form of a preparatory course, independently with the teaching materials specially created for the ZAP or with the help of the parents.

Why the regular lessons at the primary school are not enough to pass the gymnasium entrance exam, whether the primary schools are obliged to prepare the students for the entrance exam to the gymnasium and why the children should attend a gymnasium preparatory course at a private tutoring institute, you will find out in the following article.

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Table of contents:

 

Preparation for gymnasium entrance exam through regular classes is not enough

When asked why so many students need tutoring - for example in the form of private preparatory courses - to get into the gymnasium, some primary school principals are said to have replied that it is not the primary school's job to prepare students for what they will have to do in the gymnasium. This is what a comment in the Tagesanzeiger article "The school discriminates against children from non-academic backgrounds" says. In a study for the master's thesis"Unequal opportunities in preparation for the gymnasium in the canton of Zurich" by Hannah Sommer, a teacher interviewed for the study said that the school goes through the curriculum with the students in regular lessons and that this should be enough to get into the gymnasium, as long as the content is understood and the students are good at it. According to the teacher, the school's internal preparatory courses for the gymnasium (SIGVK) are merely an additional offer.

From a legal point of view, it is not true that the primary school does not have to offer preparation for the gymnasium. This is because Article 3, paragraph 2, of the Intercantonal Agreement on the Harmonisation of the Compulsory School (HarmoS Concordat) from 2007 states:

"During compulsory schooling, every pupil acquires the basic education that enables access to vocational training or to general education schools at secondary level II [...]"

According to the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Education (EDK), general education schools at secondary level II also include the gymnasiums, i.e. the schools that award the Matura. And since the term "access" is used here, the pupils would also have to be prepared for the gymnasium entrance examination at primary school, without passing which it is not possible to gain access to the gymnasium in the canton of Zurich. However, the reality is different: according to the representatives of the 13 Zurich school communities surveyed in the master's thesis at the University of Zurich in 2023, the majority (12 communities) would assess that the regular school education at primary school is not sufficient to pass the entrance examination for the gymnasium. (Sommer, Hannah: Chancenungleichheit bei der Vorbereitung auf das Gymnasium im Kanton Zürich, Master's thesis, Zurich 2023, p. 48 ff.) 

To pass the gymnasium entrance exam, separate preparation is therefore necessary, and there are various ways to prepare for it: preparation courses, independent preparation with teaching materials specially created for the ZAP, or preparation with the support of the parents. The fact that a child passes the gymnasium entrance exam without separate preparation outside of regular lessons is the exception.

The surveys of school directors and teachers in various school communities in the canton of Zurich showed that they considered the preparation courses to be essential for preparing for the gymnasium entrance exam. In particular, preparation courses are needed to teach students the specific characteristics of the entrance exam (ZAP), as well as to prepare them for the complexity of the mathematics exam and essay writing.

Through preparation for the entrance exam, students need to learn the characteristic tasks of the ZAP and the correction key. For example, students in regular lessons do not know that they have to write down their calculation steps to get partial points.

The type of tasks in mathematics and geometry would also be unfamiliar to students from regular primary school classes. Although the ZAP has adapted to the Lehrplan 21, students are not generally familiar with the exam material. Nevertheless, the math problems in the entrance exam for the gymnasium are hardly solvable without separate gymnasium preparation. This is because the tasks in the ZAP are special types of problems that children do not know from regular classes. For example, in the ZAP tasks, several sub-tasks are nested within each other. However, regular classes do not teach children to solve problems that require several steps of calculation.

Therefore, children would have to practise solving the special ZAP problem types outside of regular classes as part of special preparation for the entrance exam, in order to be familiar with this specific type of problem in the entrance exam.

The study also found that essay writing is neglected in regular school classes, so essay writing must be learned as part of separate gymnasium preparation.

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Should primary schools offer preparatory courses for entrance exams?

From Article 3, paragraph 2 of the HarmoS Concordat, we know that primary schools are actually obliged to prepare their students for the Gymi entrance examination in such a way that the students can pass the entrance examination. Another question is how the primary schools implement this requirement. In the regular school curriculum, this requirement is not implemented in the Canton of Zurich in any case.

Meanwhile, there are a number of primary schools in the Canton of Zurich that offer internal school Gymi preparation courses (SIGVK). The canton has issued a recommendation in this regard, according to which such a preparation course for the ZAP entrance examination should be conducted for interested students. However, this recommendation from the Canton of Zurich, which is addressed to all primary and secondary schools, does not go back to the HarmoS Concordat, but is based on the Primary School Act. Only the City of Zurich has a duty to offer public Gymi preparation courses. In the rest of the canton, it remains a voluntary service of the schools, with a large part of the Zurich municipalities having implemented the cantonal recommendation, according to the statement of the Middle School Office.

Unlike the private preparatory courses for the gymnasium offered by private providers, the public, i.e. school-internal, preparatory courses are either free of charge or a symbolic fee is charged, which is low compared to the private courses. However, the canton of Zurich recommends that the school communities do not charge parents for attending the public preparatory courses for the exam.

And by the way: It is said to be very common for children to participate in both types of courses to prepare for the Gymi entrance exam, i.e. both the public preparatory course at the school and a private preparatory course offered by an external provider.

As background information, please also read our article "The role of private tutoring in the Swiss education system".

 

Why should one attend a gymnasium preparatory course at a private tutoring institute?

However, if there are public preparatory courses for the gymnasium entrance exam, some of which are free, the question arises why a student should attend a gymnasium preparatory course at a private tutoring institute.

On the one hand, it is reported that the quality of the teaching in the public school-internal preparatory courses depends on the respective teacher and that these public preparatory courses are therefore unpopular with parents.

Another argument in favour of attending a private preparatory course for the gymnasium is a study by Prof. Dr Urs Peter Moser, which found that students who attended a private gymnasium preparatory course had a better chance of transferring to the long-term gymnasium. (Bildungsdirektion des Kantons Zürich (ed.): Nach sechs Jahren Primarschule. Deutsch, Mathematik und motivational-emotionales Befinden am Ende der 6. Klasse., Zürich 2011, p. 76, 172) Furthermore, a teacher in the study from Hannah Sommer's master's thesis reports that there are children in the school-internal preparatory course who only want to get an idea of the preparatory course, but are not even sure that they really want to transfer to the gymnasium. This is probably also because these courses are often free or very cheap.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that these children, who did not really want to attend the gymnasium anyway, do not take the school's internal preparatory course seriously, because the course is taught by the same teacher they would have known from regular classes. It is difficult to change roles here, the teacher reports. The private providers of preparatory courses could better convey the seriousness of the situation. By this, the teacher probably means conveying the pressure of selection that comes from the gymnasium entrance exam, and the need for separate preparation for the entrance exam because of the specific type of questions, which the students do not know from regular classes, and because of the neglected essay training in regular classes.

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