In Geneva, the announced end of the schooling of border students in the canton takes on a legal and political turn. A collective, which brings together around forty families, launches two appeals against this measure and wants to carry the file before the Grand Council.
The two appeals will be filed before the Constitutional Chamber of Court of Justice, said on Monday before the press Anthony Lehmann, in the name of “School for all”. This collective denounces a brutal measure, unfair and contrary to the values of Geneva.
The decision to educate the students at their place of domicile dates from 2018, but was accompanied by a transitional provision. The canton thus accepted that the border students who had started their education in Geneva or those with a brother or a sister who was educated there.
End of the transitional diet
The Council of State decided in June to put an end to this transitional regime, thus aligning with the practice of other cantons. From the start of the 2026 school year, border students will only be able to stay until the end of the current teaching cycle.
According to the Department of Public Instruction (DIP), there are thus 2,000 students in less than four years. The vast majority of border students (85%) are Swiss.
The appeals relate in particular to the violation of the right to basic education, to the disproportion of the measure and to the non-compliance with the separation of the powers. It is also a question of challenging the legality of the exclusion of border students from the angle of free movement.
Backup clause
A first attempt to fold the canton on the tightening of the conditions of admission of border students had failed in the Federal Court in 2020. The collective notes on Monday that the legal path may not be sufficient and counts on political mobilization to flex the executive.
He recently sent a detailed argument to the Hundred Geneva deputies to obtain the support of a socialist motion which could be debated next week to the Grand Council. This text requires that children already engaged in the Geneva school system can finish their studies there.
“We want a safeguard clause so that all students can finish their complete course without interruption,” insisted Arwen Conod, member of the collective. “Excluding 1% of students will not lighten the schools, but will break life journeys,” according to Ms. Conod. The collective also deplores the lack of precise impact report on this measure.
Injustice fiscale
According to DIP, Geneva will save 27 million francs. The canton notably justifies this decision by the lack of places in schools and demographic pressure. “Yet the areas of tension do not correspond to the border areas,” the collective is surprised. He also denounces a tax injustice, because cross -border workers finance 800 million revenue for the canton each year.
But beyond the figures, the collective fears a devastating human impact with school failures and stress. The children, who are rooted in Geneva, will lose their friends, their teachers and will have to give up their extra-curricular activities, underlined the members of the collective.
Hatred
Often pushed by the housing crisis to go into exile on the other side of the border, border families also fear stigma. Children and their families will be even more pointed out and exhibited on both sides of the border, according to the collective. And to note the surge of online hatred that each article arouses on the subject.
