The Geneva government announced in June 2025 that an estimated 2,500 cross-border pupils who attend school in Switzerland will now have to study in France. This marks the end of a Swiss exception. The neighbouring French communes are complaining that this measure was taken without consulting them.
A large number of families have moved from Geneva to neighbouring France, where access to housing is easier. Many of them were not thrilled when the Cantonal Council announced in June that a Swiss exception was coming to an end. The exception? The option for the children of cross-border families to go to state schools in Switzerland. This change, which has been in the pipeline since 2018, will fully come into force at the start of the 2026 academic year. It will involve moving 2,500 primary and middle school children from the Swiss system into French schools. “This decision is a way of ensuring equal treatment for children who live in the canton, where everyone goes to school in their own commune; this encourages students to integrate socially where they live,” explains Constance Chaix, spokesperson for the Public Education, Training And Youth Department (DIP). Schools in the canton are overcrowded. This change will thus make it possible to free up some resources. The estimated 2,500 current cross-border pupils, who will gradually leave the Swiss school system by 2029, represent a little over 200 jobs, or savings of just over 27 million Swiss francs over four years, the DIP acknowledges. This process is taking place, “in a system that has historically lacked planning”, according to David Rey, chairperson of the Union of French-speaking Teachers.
The news shocked French authorities in Greater Geneva, a group of public authorities in France, Vaud and Geneva that is supposed to provide joint solutions for a conurbation of a million people. “No local decision can destabilise the position of one or more partners within Greater Geneva. This situation is unacceptable. We argued our position before the Cantonal Council,” mayor of Annemasse Christian Dupessey, who also chairs the Pôle métropolitain, which gathers together the French-speaking communes of the whole region, wrote in the “Tribune de Genève” newspaper. “Dupessey, an elected representative of the people found out about this from the press, despite the fact that the bodies of Greater Geneva meet at least once a week. It’s unbelievable,” says an outraged Jérôme Strobel, chair of the cross-border section of the Geneva Green Party, who himself lives in France and whose two children go to school in France. The canton itself has confirmed that it did not discuss the matter with the French authorities before implementing the measure. “But discussions are planned,” adds its spokesperson, who emphasises that students living outside the canton and who already go to school in Geneva will be able to stay until the end of their current educational cycle, e.g. from the first to the fourth year of primary school, or from the ninth to the eleventh year (middle school).
Jérôme Strobel, who is a scientific assistant at Geneva University, sees this political decision as an expression of Geneva’s disregard for its French hinterland. “It’s a very provincial, small-minded move. The Geneva authorities fail to see the bigger picture of work, education, sharing and wealth.” The Green politician feels that Geneva is treating France like an adjustment variable. “The implication of this decision is that cross-border residents are taking advantage of Switzerland, when the reality is actually the opposite, with the exception of all the commuter traffic flooding into Geneva,” believes the ecologist. The Geneva economy, which requires a huge number of workers to run, is indeed the reason behind the presence of around 115,000 cross-border workers – not to mention an unknown number of Swiss cross-border workers who live in France as “secondary residents” – who constitute one-third of all people working in Geneva. This labour coming into Switzerland from the outside arrives pretrained. This means that Geneva is conferring some of its costs onto France, a criticism that also applies to housing.
For the Swiss – or foreign – cross-border residents who send their children to school in Switzerland, the news in June came like a slap in the face: on the other side of the border, the system is struggling. There are not enough teachers, some lessons are not taught at all. A teacher beginning their career in a French school will earn around 2,000 euros per month, whereas someone working in a Swiss supermarket will earn twice that. The French communes in the Geneva area are among the most unequal in France, in a region where prices are inflated by the salaries of cross-border workers and finding housing for civil servants is a headache. “This announcement is the umpteenth penknife-blow to Franco-Swiss cross-border relations,” responds Florent Benoît, centre-right mayor of the small commune of Vulbens, a stone’s throw from Geneva and chair of the Community of Cross-Border Communes of the French Geneva Region.
Granted, no other border region of Switzerland operates the system being discontinued by the Cantonal Council. In Ticino, pupils who live outside the canton are only admitted to its schools under exceptional circumstances. Attending a school involves paying a tax, which can range from 8,250 francs for secondary schools to 16,500 francs for upper secondary schools. In Basel, only 11 cross-border children from France or Germany attended nursery school, primary school or secondary school in 2024 and 2025, according to the Communications Section of the Education Department of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. These families pay for the privilege, to the tune of around 15,000 francs per year. In the Jura, “cross-border residents who would like their children to attend school in the canton of Jura may opt for a private school education”, according to Anne-Lise Nagel, from the Education Section.
Does this mean that Geneva does not play by the same rules as the rest of Switzerland? Undoubtedly, although cross-border residents do occupy something of a unique space in this region. “France is five minutes away as the crow flies from Geneva, which it completely surrounds,” points out Jérôme Strobel. He says he is not contesting the content of the decision, but the manner in which it was taken, which is seen as cavalier and contrary to the long-term interests of the agglomeration. These arguments were dismissed by another Green politician, State Councillor Antonio Hodgers, who has appeared in the French and Vaud press. “Vaud residents are not allowed to send their children to school in Geneva, even if they themselves work there,” he argued.
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Ce que l’article omet de préciser est qu’à Genève les frontaliers sont prélevés à la source par le canton de Genève. Donc la scolarité est déjà payée si un enfant de frontalier est scolarisé dans le canton. Ce qui n’est pas le cas à Bâle où les frontaliers payent leurs impôts en France (et ensuite il y a probablement une compensation au canton). Donc il est normal qu’un frontalier près de Bâle paye pour inscrire son enfant à l’école, tout comme il va être normal que le canton de Genève diminue les impôts à la source des frontaliers qui n’auront désormais plus à participer à cet effort scolaire. Petit point ironique dans les commentaires de la DIP de Genève, les classes sont soit disant surchargées, mais quand même le départ des enfants de frontaliers permettront de virer des profs plutôt qu’avoir des classes moins chargées! Drôle, non?