Teachers' Perspectives on the Integration of Refugees into the Swiss Compulsory School System

We register the design, hypotheses and statistical analysis for a survey experiment on compulsory school teachers’ level of support for policies aimed at newly arrived refugee pupils. In this setup, the experimental variation is the nationality label attached to otherwise identical policy statements (Ukrainian or Afghan), randomized between respondents and held constant across statements. The statements cover: (1) the allocation of pupils to the teacher’s school next term; (2) the provision of as many local-language lessons as needed during the first school year; (3) the provision of an earmarked per-pupil integration grant for the first school year; (4) the co-financing of mother-tongue and culture (HSK) classes during the first two years since arrival; (5) the option to waive formal grades in the first semester when evidence is insufficient, replacing grades with a short learning report; and (6) the provision of trauma-informed and intercultural-pedagogy training for teachers. We measure the level of support for each policy statement. For our statistical analysis, we estimate treatment effects using OLS. Results are reported in standardized units based on control group distributions. Heterogeneity analyses are conducted by linguistic region, gender, and nationality, but remain cautious given sample size limitations. The results of our study will shed light on whether there are different preferences from stakeholders (teachers) towards pupils from different nationalities within a compulsory school education system setting.