“A lower grade does not always mean less knowledge. Sometimes it means that knowledge has entered a new system and has not yet learned how to become visible there.”
A child was doing well at school before moving to Switzerland.
Mathematics was fine.
Biology was fine.
History was fine.
Teachers considered the child capable. Homework did not create a family crisis. Tests produced predictable results.
Then the family moves.
A few months later, the picture looks completely different.
The child takes much longer to do homework.
Questions that should be easy seem difficult.
Test results fall.
The student begins saying:
“I don’t understand.”
Parents may hear:
“Your child needs more German.”
Or perhaps:
“The level is too difficult.”
And an uncomfortable question appears:
What happened to the child who used to be good at school?
Sometimes there really is a gap in subject knowledge.
Sometimes the previous curriculum was different.
Sometimes the new school demands more.
But there is another possibility that deserves much more attention:
the knowledge may still be there, while the conditions required to demonstrate that knowledge have changed.
That distinction is crucial for families entering the Swiss education system.
Moving Countries Does Not Simply Move the Same Student Into Another Classroom
We often imagine educational migration too simply.
A student studied mathematics in one country.
Now the student studies mathematics in Switzerland.
Therefore:
old mathematics → new mathematics
But this is rarely what actually happens.
The learner has moved between educational systems.
That may change:
- the language of instruction,
- academic terminology,
- curriculum sequence,
- notation and conventions,
- classroom expectations,
- textbook structure,
- assessment formats,
- instruction verbs,
- expected forms of explanation,
- pace,
- grading practices,
- teacher-student interaction,
- and assumptions about what the learner should already know.
At the same time, the child is adapting to a new country, new classmates, new teachers and often a new social identity.
So the real transition is closer to:
knowledge + language + curriculum + conventions + expectations + adaptation → observable school performance
The subject may have the same name.
The educational task is no longer identical.
The Grade Is Real. But What Produced It?
Suppose a student previously received strong mathematics marks and now receives a poor result on a Swiss school test.
The grade is real.
It should not be dismissed.
But the grade does not automatically tell us why it happened.
Imagine four students who all receive the same low mark.
Student A
Does not understand the mathematical concept.
Student B
Understands the mathematics but cannot process the German word problem quickly enough.
Student C
Understands both mathematics and German vocabulary but misinterprets what the task requires.
Student D
Understands the task but has never encountered this particular topic because the previous curriculum introduced subjects in another sequence.
Four identical marks.
Four different educational problems.
And therefore four different interventions.
If we respond to all four students with:
“You need to practise more maths,”
we may help one of them.
If we respond with:
“You just need better German,”
we may help another.
Good educational support begins one step earlier:
What exactly produced the error?
Migration Can Change the Interface Without Erasing the Knowledge
Think about a computer program.
The underlying information can remain intact even when the interface changes.
The buttons move.
Commands have different names.
The sequence of actions changes.
A person who knew exactly what to do in the previous interface suddenly becomes slow.
This does not necessarily mean they have forgotten the task.
They are learning how to access the same function through a different system.
Something similar can happen academically.
A student may know the mathematical concept but not the German terminology through which the concept is presented.
A student may know how to construct an argument but not recognise what begründe requires.
A student may know a biological process but not yet possess the German lexical network needed to explain it.
The difficulty is real.
But the location of the difficulty matters.
“I Know This” Can Mean Several Different Things
Students often say:
“We already did this.”
Parents then become confused when the student performs badly.
But “we already did this” can mean several things.
The learner may:
- recognise the topic,
- remember having studied it,
- recognise the formula,
- reproduce a familiar procedure,
- explain the concept,
- apply it independently,
- transfer it to an unfamiliar problem.
These are not the same ability.
A student who recognises a formula may not be able to retrieve it independently.
A student who retrieves it may not understand why it works.
A student who understands it may still fail to identify when it should be used.
And a student who can do all of those things in one language may temporarily struggle to do them in another.
So before concluding that previous schooling “did not work” — or that the new school is simply “too difficult” — we need to identify which layer survived the transition and which layer did not.
The Language Problem Is Often Larger Than Vocabulary
Consider a simple instruction:
Begründe deine Antwort.
A learner may understand:
deine Antwort.
They may even know that begründen is translated as justify or give reasons.
But successful school performance requires more than knowing the translation.
The learner must understand what counts as an acceptable Begründung in that classroom and in that subject.
Compare:
Beschreibe.
Erkläre.
Begründe.
Vergleiche.
Beurteile.
These verbs are not decorative vocabulary.
They specify different intellectual operations.
A student may know the content and still lose points because the answer performs the wrong operation.
That is why academic German is not simply “German with harder words”.
It is partly a language for organising academic actions.
Mathematics Makes the Problem Especially Visible
Mathematics is often described as universal.
And at one level it is.
Twelve divided by three does not produce a different result in Zurich, Kyiv, Madrid or São Paulo.
But school mathematics is not only calculation.
It also involves:
- instructions,
- definitions,
- verbal conditions,
- diagrams,
- conventions,
- explanations,
- proofs,
- word problems,
- assumptions,
- units,
- and decisions about which information matters.
A child can therefore know the mathematics and still fail the linguistic representation of the mathematics.
Take:
Um wie viel Prozent ist der Preis gestiegen?
and:
Auf wie viel Prozent des ursprünglichen Preises ist der Preis gestiegen?
The arithmetic relationship is closely related.
The questions are not asking for the same number.
If the learner misses um versus auf, the calculator will not rescue them.
The mathematical error began before the calculation.
This is one reason we treat learning mathematics in German as a genuine Language + Subject task rather than simply a mathematics lesson with translated vocabulary.
But Not Every Difficulty Is a Language Difficulty
The reverse mistake is equally important.
Once a child has moved to a German-speaking environment, German can become the explanation for everything.
Low mathematics grade?
German.
Weak biology test?
German.
Slow homework?
German.
But suppose the learner understands:
Warum schwimmt ein Körper auf dem Wasser?
perfectly well and still cannot explain buoyancy.
Then vocabulary is not necessarily the central problem.
Or suppose a student understands every word of an algebra problem but has never understood what an equation represents.
More German lessons will not repair the mathematical concept.
The useful diagnostic question is therefore never simply:
Language or subject?
It may be:
language, subject, task interpretation, retrieval, curriculum difference, or some combination of them?
Curriculum Gaps Are Not the Same as Ability Gaps
Moving between school systems can create another illusion.
Curricula do not always introduce the same topics:
- at the same age,
- in the same sequence,
- with the same depth,
- using the same notation,
- or with the same expectations.
A student may therefore encounter something in Switzerland that classmates have already studied.
For the local class, it is revision.
For the newcomer, it is new.
That can produce an immediate performance gap.
But consider what the gap actually tells us.
It tells us:
the students currently possess different educational histories.
It does not automatically tell us:
one student has less intellectual capacity.
A curriculum gap is often teachable precisely because it can be identified.
The danger comes when a missing topic is interpreted as a permanent characteristic of the learner.
Even Familiar Content Can Be Organised Differently
There is an even subtler problem.
Sometimes both school systems taught the same topic.
But they organised it differently.
One curriculum may emphasise procedures.
Another may demand explanation.
One may rely heavily on symbolic manipulation.
Another may use contextualised word problems.
One may expect the learner to reproduce a standard method.
Another may ask the student to choose and justify a method.
The child can therefore encounter a familiar mathematical object inside an unfamiliar epistemic task.
In simpler language:
the student knows the topic but does not yet know what this school expects them to do with it.
That difference is easy to misdiagnose.
Time Can Change What a Student Appears to Know
Suppose a student can solve a problem correctly in twelve minutes.
The school test allows six.
Does the student know the material?
Yes.
Can the student currently demonstrate that knowledge under the assessment conditions?
Not reliably.
Both statements can be true.
Second-language processing can make this particularly visible.
The learner reads.
Interprets.
Sometimes mentally translates.
Checks terminology.
Constructs the answer.
Checks the German.
Only then writes.
Each individual operation may be manageable.
Together they consume time and working memory.
So a child who appears “slow” may not necessarily be thinking slowly.
The student may be performing more cognitive operations per answer.
As academic language becomes more automatic, some of those operations disappear.
The observable performance can then improve even though the underlying mathematical concept has not changed.
Switzerland Adds Another Important Variable: There Is No Single Swiss School Experience
Families sometimes speak about “the Swiss school system” as if moving anywhere in Switzerland meant entering one identical structure.
It does not.
Education is strongly organised at cantonal level.
Structures, terminology, transition procedures and some educational arrangements vary.
That is why statements such as:
“In Switzerland children are always placed…”
or
“Swiss schools always require…”
should immediately make us cautious.
The relevant question is often:
Which canton? Which municipality? Which school level? Which educational pathway?
This is particularly important when families compare experiences found online.
Advice that is accurate for one canton may not describe another.
What Zurich Does With Newly Arrived Students Is Revealing
The Canton of Zurich provides a useful example of how educational authorities themselves distinguish language proficiency from the child’s entire academic profile.
Newly arrived school-age children are entitled to full schooling regardless of their German proficiency.
Students with limited German can receive intensive Deutsch als Zweitsprache (DaZ) support.
Some municipalities also use Aufnahmeklassen, where newly arrived students initially receive intensive German instruction together with other subjects before moving fully into a regular class.
Most importantly, when newly arrived students are assigned within secondary education, the decision is not supposed to reduce the learner to their current German.
Previous schooling and the learner’s expected development also matter.
That principle is educationally significant.
It recognises something parents desperately need to understand:
the German you can demonstrate today and the learner you can become are not the same measurement.
International Data Require the Same Caution
Large international assessments show performance differences between students with and without immigrant backgrounds.
Those differences are real at population level.
But their interpretation is much more complicated than:
immigrant students perform worse because they are immigrants.
OECD analyses repeatedly show that socio-economic circumstances and language background account for substantial parts of observed performance differences.
Recent PISA analysis also emphasises that first-generation students who enter a new education system later in their schooling may face the additional challenge of studying in a language different from the one used at home or in previous education.
That does not allow us to predict the performance of an individual child.
Population statistics are not diagnoses.
But they reinforce the same methodological principle:
an observed educational difference can have multiple causes.
Good diagnosis tries to separate them.
The First Months Can Produce a Distorted Picture
Imagine a capable student arriving at school with several simultaneous disadvantages:
They do not yet understand every instruction automatically.
They are unfamiliar with some curriculum content.
They do not know the teacher’s expectations.
They need longer to read.
They are afraid of making grammatical mistakes.
They do not know which questions are acceptable to ask.
They may not yet have friends.
They are learning classroom routines that local students have internalised for years.
Now give this student a test.
The result measures something real.
But what exactly?
Certainly some subject knowledge.
Also language processing.
Also adaptation.
Possibly curriculum alignment.
Possibly confidence.
Possibly speed.
Possibly familiarity with assessment.
This is why early results after migration should be taken seriously without being interpreted simplistically.
Parents Often Make One of Two Opposite Mistakes
The first mistake is:
“My child was an excellent student before, so the Swiss school must be wrong.”
That conclusion is not justified.
The new system may expose genuine gaps that were invisible before.
A learner who received high marks elsewhere may still need to develop deeper conceptual understanding or different academic skills.
The second mistake is:
“My child now receives lower grades, so apparently we overestimated their ability.”
That conclusion is equally premature.
The learner may be navigating several new systems simultaneously.
The correct response is neither denial nor surrender.
It is diagnosis.
A Useful Diagnostic Test: Change One Variable at a Time
When we work with a learner whose performance changed after migration, one of the most informative things we can do is vary the conditions.
Give the same concept in simpler German.
What changes?
Give the task in the learner’s stronger language.
What changes?
Remove the time pressure.
What changes?
Replace a word problem with a diagram.
What changes?
Ask for an oral explanation instead of a written one.
What changes?
Provide the academic terminology but not the solution.
What changes?
Ask a new problem using the same concept.
What changes?
Each variation gives information.
If the student succeeds when the language changes, language is probably part of the bottleneck.
If performance remains weak in the strongest language, the conceptual gap may be deeper.
If the learner succeeds only with familiar-looking exercises, transfer may be the problem.
If the answer is correct orally but poor in writing, production demands may matter.
Instead of asking:
“Is the student good at maths?”
we can begin constructing a much more precise map.
From “Weak Student” to a Map of Bottlenecks
A useful educational diagnosis might look like this:
Concept: strong
Calculation: strong
German terminology: developing
Reading speed: slow
Task interpretation: inconsistent
Independent retrieval: strong
Written explanation: weak
Curriculum gap: one specific topic
Time pressure: significant effect
Now compare that with:
“Weak at maths.”
The first description tells us what to teach.
The second tells us almost nothing.
This is why labels can become educationally dangerous.
They compress a complex learner into a single judgement.
Teaching has to perform the opposite operation:
decompress the result until the mechanism becomes visible.
What Should a Family Do When Grades Drop After Moving?
Do not begin by buying more of everything.
More German.
More mathematics.
More homework.
More worksheets.
More hours.
Quantity is not diagnosis.
Instead, collect evidence.
Look at actual schoolwork.
Compare correct and incorrect answers.
Ask the child to explain the task.
Try the same concept in another language.
Identify unfamiliar terminology.
Check whether the topic was covered previously.
Notice whether difficulty appears before calculation, during calculation or during explanation.
Ask what happens when time pressure disappears.
Find out whether the child understands teacher feedback.
The objective is not to defend the child from every poor mark.
It is to discover what the mark is actually telling you.
Sometimes the Right Lesson Is German
If the subject knowledge is intact but access is blocked by German, targeted German work may be exactly what the learner needs.
But “German” should then be specific.
Not random vocabulary.
Not grammar disconnected from school.
The learner may need:
- academic instruction verbs,
- subject terminology,
- complex sentence processing,
- explanation structures,
- comparison language,
- cause-and-effect language,
- hypothesis and justification,
- reading strategies.
German becomes a tool for making existing knowledge accessible.
Sometimes the Right Lesson Is the Subject
If the learner understands the language but lacks the concept, then pretending that the difficulty is linguistic wastes time.
The student needs mathematics.
Or physics.
Or biology.
Or another subject.
The language can still matter, but it is not the primary bottleneck.
And Sometimes the Right Lesson Is Both at Once
This is the educational space that conventional categories often miss.
A learner may need to understand mathematics through German.
Or biology through German.
Or physics through another language of education.
In that situation, separating language and subject too rigidly can create an artificial problem.
The subject supplies the meaning.
The language supplies access to the meaning.
And each helps organise the other.
This is the logic behind our Language + Subject approach at Levitin Language School.
The objective is not merely to translate the school textbook.
It is to help the learner build a direct relationship between the academic concept and the language in which that concept must be understood, discussed and demonstrated.
A Lower Grade Can Be Useful Information
None of this means grades should be ignored.
Quite the opposite.
A lower grade is data.
The question is what we do with it.
We can turn it into an identity:
“You are weaker now.”
Or into a diagnosis:
“Something changed. Let’s find out what.”
The second approach is more demanding.
It requires us to distinguish knowledge from performance.
Concept from vocabulary.
Vocabulary from task interpretation.
Curriculum from ability.
Recognition from retrieval.
Understanding from explanation.
Learning from demonstrating learning.
But once those distinctions are visible, the problem often becomes much more manageable.
Your Child May Not Need to “Start Again”
This matters emotionally as well as academically.
After migration, students can begin to believe that everything they learned before has somehow become worthless.
They sit in a classroom and cannot answer quickly.
Someone else finishes first.
Their vocabulary sounds childish compared with their thinking.
They know what they want to say but cannot yet construct the sentence.
That experience can create a dangerous illusion:
“Maybe I’m not good at this anymore.”
But education after migration should not automatically mean starting from zero.
Often the task is to reconnect existing knowledge to a new educational environment.
Some knowledge needs expanding.
Some needs restructuring.
Some genuinely needs relearning.
But some merely needs a new route of access.
Those are very different educational situations.
The Question Changes Everything
When a child who previously did well begins struggling after moving to Switzerland, the weakest question is:
“Why has my child become worse at school?”
It already assumes the answer.
A better question is:
“What changed between what my child knows and what the new school requires them to demonstrate?”
Now we can investigate.
Did the concept change?
The curriculum?
The language?
The terminology?
The task format?
The expected explanation?
The speed?
The assessment conditions?
The learner’s confidence?
Several of them at once?
Once we know that, we can decide what kind of support actually makes sense.
Because a child who needs German should not receive endless mathematics worksheets.
A child who needs mathematics should not spend months learning unrelated German vocabulary.
And a child who needs to connect mathematics with German needs someone to work at the connection itself.
Conclusion
Moving to Switzerland can temporarily change how a child looks academically.
That does not mean every disappointing grade is misleading.
It does not mean the previous school was better.
It does not mean the Swiss school is wrong.
And it certainly does not mean every difficulty can be explained by German.
It means something more precise:
school performance is produced by a system of interacting variables.
Migration changes several of those variables at once.
The educational task is therefore not to protect an old image of the child and not to accept a new label uncritically.
It is to find out what the learner knows now, what the learner cannot yet do, and what stands between the two.
That is where useful teaching begins.
A grade tells us what became visible under certain conditions. Education begins when we ask what remained invisible — and why.
Tymur Levitin
Founder & Director, Levitin Language School
© 2026 Tymur Levitin / Levitin Language School. All rights reserved.
