Language Assistants Programme

The Language Assistants Programme is an advantage for everyone involved.

For the assistants:
The teaching assistants – for the most part future or as yet inexperienced language teachers – gain experience in language teaching methods and, at the same time, improve their own knowledge of a foreign language. They broaden their knowledge about life in the host country and its education system. They then return to their native country with a particular qualification.

For the pupils:
The pupils of the host school are given a new kind of access to the foreign language: they get to know someone from the country in which the language they want to learn is spoken.  This increases their motivation to learn, they improve their knowledge of the foreign language and their understanding of other cultures is developed.

For the teachers of the host schools:
The teaching assistant is involved in the teaching and opens up new possibilities for instruction in split classes and groups. The teaching assistant brings authentic materials with him/her. With current topics from his/her country of origin, he/she builds bridges with the world in which the pupils live and, in this way, motivates them to make active use of the language.

For the school heads:
The teaching assistant provides support with teaching subjects using the foreign language as the medium of instruction (immersion or bilingual lessons). He/she makes a contribution to the international openness of the host schools.

Movetia recruits, selects and arranges places for language assistants abroad or in Switzerland, in collaboration with foreign partner organisations in the UK, the United States, France, Germany, Austria, Spain and Belgium. 

• Language assistantships abroad: students and graduates from universities, universities of applied arts and sciences and teacher training colleges, or novice teachers from Switzerland who would like to go abroad to teach their native language German, French or Italian. As part of a pilot project, starting in 2022, Swiss schools abroad will also be able to hire language assistants.
• Language assistantships in Switzerland: Students from universities, universities of applied arts and sciences and teacher training colleges or as yet inexperienced teachers from abroad, who have either a British citizenship or of an EU/EFTA-country and would like to teach their mother tongue, English, German, French, Italian or Spanish in Switzerland. From the 2022/2023 school year, US citizens can also participate through the Fulbright programme.
  Or Swiss nationals living abroad in countries in which English, German, French, Italian or Spanish is the official national language.
• Swiss host schools: Swiss schools of secondary level II (secondary schools, vocational schools, vocational Baccalaureate schools) that would like to serve as host schools for a language assistant. Upon request, other levels may also be considered.
• Swiss schools abroad: Schools of all levels in Italy, Spain and Singapore.