Handwriting education in Switzerland is characterised by regional differences, with German, French and Italian speaking regions stipulating different pedagogical approaches and handwriting models.
In Switzerland, the education system operates under a decentralised framework. Each of the 26 autonomous cantons work independently, while conforming to constitutional guidelines that promote harmonisation. The Staatssekretariat für Bildung, Forschung und Innovation (SBFI), or State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, oversees national policies, and the Konferenz der kantonalen Erziehungsdirektorinnen und -direktoren, or Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (EDK), co-ordinates inter-cantonal efforts.
Public and private schools coexist in Switzerland. Public ones are primarily government-funded, whereas private schools rely on tuition and private sources. Financial responsibility is shared by the Confederation, cantons, and communes, with the latter two jointly covering compulsory education costs.
School education is divided into five stages: early childhood (3–5 years old), primary (6–12 years old), lower secondary (13–15 years old) and upper secondary (16 years old upwards). While early childhood education is not formally mandatory, most cantons require attendance during the final two years. So, compulsory schooling usually begins at age 4 and lasts 11 years till the end of lower secondary.
The country is multilingual, and delivers instruction in German (62%), French (23%), Italian (8%) and Romansh (0.5%), requiring students to master a second national language and English during their compulsory education.
Instead of a uniform national curriculum, education is governed by regional frameworks aligned with the country’s official languages. Each linguistic region adopts its own set of educational standards that reflect local cultural and pedagogical traditions: Lehrplan 21 for German-speaking cantons, Plan d’études romand (PER) for French-speaking areas, and Piano di studio della scuola dell’obbligo ticinese for the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino.
Since 2014, students in Switzerland’s German-speaking cantons have been introduced to basic, unconnected writing in the first or second grade. They progress to personal semi-connected handwriting by the third or fourth grade. On other hand, the French and Italian cantons follow more traditional approaches to handwriting education. Students begin with print letters in the first grade, and then learn cursive writing from the middle of the second.
Regional approaches to handwriting education
In the early 20th century, Switzerland recognised the need to standardise handwriting in schools and commerce due to the importance of international communications and the country’s multilingualism.
In 1926, teacher and designer Paul Hulliger created the Hulligerschrift, which was initially adopted in Basel and later by ten German-speaking cantons as the official Schweizer Schulschrift, or Swiss School Script. In 1947, designer and calligrapher Eugen Kuhn, along with teacher Karl Eigenmann, revised this model, resulting in the Schnüerlischrift, a looped fully-connected cursive script with slant. This handwriting style was taught using notebooks with diagonal guidelines to help maintain letter consistency, with students often using fountain pens. It remained in use until 2014, when it was replaced by the Basisschrift.
Lehrplan 21 was developed by the German-Swiss Conference of Educational Directors and published in 2014. It emphasises handwriting instruction by promoting the use of a semi-cursive script using the typeface, Deutschschweizer Basisschrift. The program Unterwegs zur persönlichen Handschrift, or On the way to personal handwriting, fosters handwriting development by starting with a basic print form and gradually evolving towards a more fluid, individualised style. The use of Basisschrift supports legibility and fluency while encouraging personal expression.
In contrast, the Plan d’études romand (2003), created by the Conférence intercantonale de l’instruction publique de la Suisse romande et du Tessin (CIIP), does not explicitly address handwriting in the core curriculum but provides specific guidelines in the document called Recommandations pour l’enseignement de l’écriture au Cycle 1 and access to resources for teaching an simplified French cursive model, commonly using the NE FR TypoLibre typeface.
The Piano di studio (2022) in Ticino integrated writing within broader language instruction and allows teachers autonomy in their pedagogical choices. Two years later, a report by the Dipartimento dell’educazione, della cultura e dello sport (DECS), or Department of Education, Culture and Sport, described Corsivo and scrittura mista, or cursive and mixed writing, as handwriting models to be taught in primary schools.