ABSTRACT
In the first phase of massive immigration, 80 percent of the immigrants were either German or French, and in 1920 they comprised more than 50 percent of the foreign population. Switzerland is a country in which immigration is a historically recent phenomenon. Accordingly, the number of foreign children and their proportion among the total population of children were small when immigration began after World War II, but they soon rose rapidly. Switzerland was soon more than double the percentage of foreigners in the total population. Implementation of schooling, however, is in the hands of the cantons, although they actually leave it up to the municipalities. School attendance is compulsory to the age of 15/16. A study made in Switzerland in 1969 showed that 49.8 percent of the Italian immigrants said they planned to send their children to a college-preparatory school and to college afterward.
