Every Canton has its own educational system, but they all turn out quite alike. There are differences (See the Interviews section for more info on those!), but the base is always 9 years of compulsory education, split between primary and secondary education either 5+4 or 6+3, followed by the choice between college and apprenticeship.
Well, actually it's a bit more complicated than that.
The student may choose either of the following:
1. Doing an apprenticeship (French: apprentissage / German: Lehrling). That means going to school a few days a week and working a few others for a real employer, who pays real money.
If all goes well, you get a Federal Certificate of Capacity at the end of all this. Then you can call yourself a skilled worker and your employer will have to pay you a little more. You don’t have to look for work, you can almost always stay where you have done your apprenticeship.
2. Going to technical school to become a technician or engineer. This is the same as an engineer in Germany or England. I don’t know exactly what this means, but it is obvious that this isn’t a higher technical education or even the usual choice to make for a Swiss person who wants such an education.
3. Going to Gymnasium/Gymnasee/Lycee for4 years, and get a Federal Certificate of Maturity (Note that all of these certificates are Federal!) in Science, Letters or General Matters. (The latter isn’t really Federal. There are agreements between some Cantons to acknowledge General education.)
4. Going to Commercial School and get another Federal Certificate of Maturity.
5. Going to private school, where you can get similar degrees. Private schools include schools for dropouts who still want to stay in some kind of education, expensive Elitist schools, and Religious schools.
Then it's University for those who have chosen alternative 3 and probably some of the others, too.
Through all of this, from the first year of primary school to the last year of University, the Swiss school children get grades. They get them often, after each one of the many small tests they do all through the year. Finally, these test results are plainly averaged and a student’s average in a subject, as I understand it, is the student’s result in that subject. If the results aren’t good enough, the student may have to do that whole school year all over.
Basically, that is school in Switzerland.
