Swiss schools and childcare: what an arriving parent needs

Kita and Kindergarten are not the same thing

This is the confusion that costs arriving families the most. A Kita — Kindertagesstätte, crèche, garderie — takes children from a few months old, runs all day, is paid for, and is what a working parent needs. A Kindergarten is the first two years of school, roughly ages four to six, part of the public system.

English sources routinely use one word for both. If you arrive with a toddler and go looking for “kindergarten”, you will find the school system and not the childcare you need.

Geneva: register during pregnancy, and keep the file alive

This is the single most actionable fact on this page. In Geneva you may register for childcare from the twelfth week of pregnancy, through BIPE. You must then update your file every six months with current employment documents, or you lose your place in the queue.

Priority goes to families domiciled in the city; those who only work there are processed after residents are served. Tariffs scale on household income across brackets running from CHF 16,000 to CHF 220,000.

If you arrive in Geneva with a one-year-old and start looking then, you are years behind people who started before the child existed.

Basel: German before kindergarten is compulsory, and it is three half-days

Basel-Stadt has a rule with no equivalent in most cantons: mandatory German provision in the year before kindergarten, for children who speak little or no German. It is three half-days a week.

The figure of two half-days circulates widely and is not wrong so much as expired — the Grosser Rat voted the third half-day in December 2023 and it took effect in August 2024. Any English source still saying two was written before that and has not been touched since, which is a useful way to judge a source.

On cost, the honest answer has two halves. In a Spielgruppe the canton pays for the three half-days, so it is free to you. In a Kita or with a Tagesfamilie you receive a contribution, not full coverage, so a real cost sits there. Screening runs eighteen months before kindergarten entry, when every child's German is assessed by questionnaire.

Zurich's all-day schools: automatic is not compulsory

Seventy-two Zurich schools run as Tagesschulen in the 2026/27 school year, and conversion of all city schools has been running since 2023 with completion targeted by 2030.

The point English content most often gets wrong: children are enrolled in the basic Tagesschule model automatically, and parents may opt out. Automatic is not compulsory. The opt-out deadlines are 2 July for the first semester and 30 November for the second, and a parent who misses them is committed for that semester.

A bound midday costs a flat CHF 6, reducible to a maximum of CHF 4.50 on application where finances warrant it.

“Public school is free” is true and misleading at the same time

Tuition is free. Lunch is not, and in an all-day school lunch is most days. At CHF 14.65 per lunch, five days a week, that is roughly CHF 293 a month per child for lunch alone at the standard rate.

Guides that stop at “public school is free” leave you unprepared for exactly this.

How long language support lasts, in Zurich

Intake classes run 8 to 14 pupils for a maximum of one year, or two if the child attends a regular class at the same time, and are only available from grade 2 upward — kindergarten and grade 1 receive support inside the regular class. So the real Zurich arc is roughly one intensive year plus up to two years of top-up, a figure English guides almost never give.