Notes on boarding schools and international schools.
How a family decides from another country, what weighs in admissions, and what the website can do for the team that answers them.
Boarding schools ·
A family pays for boarding school with ETH in mind. Your website shows the school’s average, and the average does not answer the question.
Many families choose a Swiss boarding school with a Swiss university in mind. The International Baccalaureate Diploma opens that door, but with a minimum score excluding bonus points and a subject combination decided two years earlier. What Basel and ETH Zurich require, what I do not know, the blind spot in the timetable, and what I would publish on a school’s website.
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Asking permission for a photo is the part everyone remembers. Deciding when it comes down is the part that has just cost 3,000 euros.
A decision by the Spanish data protection authority, summarised in April 2026, fined a school operator 6,000 euros: half for publishing images without consent it could prove, half for planning to keep them with no time limit. What the regulator’s guidance and Swiss law say, what I do not know, and how I would handle student photos on a boarding school’s website.
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Before a Chinese family reads your website, an agent has often read it first. And decides whether your school makes the list.
According to a survey by the UK’s Boarding Schools’ Association of 943 Chinese families, 86.5% relied most on an agent for information, with school websites next at 52.5%. What that tells a Swiss boarding school about who reads its website before the family does, what cannot be inferred from the figure, and the page I would add.
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An AI assistant on a boarding school website has to know how to answer. Above all, it has to know when not to.
An AI assistant on a boarding school website answers questions about fees, visits and documents. But sometimes a message arrives that is not an enquiry. What England has required of its schools since September 2026, what Swiss law has asked of staff since 2019, the English standard for AI in education, and the rules I would write before switching an assistant on.
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In admissions, AI can answer, gather and organise. When it scores a family, EU law treats it as high-risk, and Swiss law already asks for explanations.
AI can take a great deal of work off an admissions team. But a tool that scores, ranks or recommends applicants is on the high-risk list of the EU AI Act, with obligations from December 2027, and Swiss data protection law already requires an automated rejection to be explained today. Where the line is, and what a boarding school’s website should say.
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When a school changes hands, families do not read the press release. They search for what happens to their place.
In January 2026, a group with 125 schools welcomed an international school in Geneva founded in 1961, its third in Switzerland. A year earlier, an investor consortium completed the purchase of another group, valued at US$14.5 billion. For families, a change of owner is not a financial transaction: it is the question of whether the school will stay the same. Who answers it first, and in which language.
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Phillips Exeter charges USD 71,797 for a boarding year and supports half its students with aid. The family looking at Switzerland already knows.
One of America’s best-known academies charges USD 71,797 for a boarding year, admits students without regard to ability to pay and supports almost half of them with aid. A leading Swiss boarding school publishes CHF 164,400. International families do that sum before they write. Why a Swiss school should not compete on price but should explain its own, and where I found the best public explanation of it.
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The price of a boarding school is not a number. It is a calendar.
Families compare boarding schools by the annual fee. What decides whether they sign is everything around it: registration, deposit, supplements, insurance, the payment calendar and the rules for leaving. One school publishes all of it in a clear contract. Why that should be on every school’s website, and why the real decision window for families switching school may close in March.
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Your students’ residence permits also depend on one sentence on your website.
For students from outside the EU and EFTA, a listing in the Swiss Private School Register is the shortcut through the permit process. The register requires every piece of advertising to state clearly what kind of recognition a qualification has. A website is advertising, in every language, including the translations nobody at the school can read.
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The families leaving British schools over VAT are rarely your market. The ones deciding at 16 are.
British private schools have lost pupils two years running since VAT arrived. Many Swiss schools hope those families will come to them. The numbers suggest a different target: the families who reconsider at 16, and the European families who now face VAT and visas in England.
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What families look for on a boarding school website.
Families choose a Swiss boarding school from abroad, months ahead and often in a second language. What they look for on the website before asking to visit, and why booking should happen in their own time zone.
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