The Plan d'études romand (PER, the French-speaking Switzerland curriculum) is the official school curriculum of French-speaking Switzerland. From year 1 to year 11 of HarmoS (the Swiss inter-cantonal school harmonisation), it sets out what every pupil must learn and the level expected at the end of each cycle. Published by the CIIP, it is the shared reference for the seven French-speaking and bilingual cantons.
The PER is published by the CIIP (the intercantonal conference of public education for French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino). It applies in the French-speaking cantons and regions: Fribourg, Geneva, Jura, Neuchâtel, Valais, Vaud and the French-speaking part of the canton of Bern. Adopted in 2010 and introduced progressively across all teaching cycles up to the start of the 2014 school year, it replaced the former cantonal curricula with a common foundation. Each canton keeps some latitude in how it organises things (teaching materials, timetables, a few of its own contents), but the learning objectives are shared. The official text can be consulted freely on portail.ciip.ch.
The PER structures learning around six subject domains:
Added to these domains are two cross-cutting strands: General Education (health and well-being, personal choices and projects, living together and democracy, interdependencies) and Cross-cutting Capacities (collaboration, communication, learning strategies, creative thinking, reflective approach). For each subject, the PER describes objectives and a learning progression year by year.
Compulsory schooling covers eleven HarmoS years, divided into three cycles. The first two years (year 1 and year 2) correspond to nursery school.
| Cycle | HarmoS years | Indicative age |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle 1 | Year 1 to year 4 | 4 to 8 years |
| Cycle 2 | Year 5 to year 8 | 8 to 12 years |
| Cycle 3 | Year 9 to year 11 | 12 to 15 years |
The PER is public and free. On portail.ciip.ch, you choose a domain, then a subject, then the cycle, to read the objectives, which are set for the end of the cycle rather than year by year. The former plandetudes.ch address still works but now redirects to this portal. It is the most reliable way to know what is genuinely being aimed at in class, rather than relying on generic content.
Revising usefully means revising at the right PER level, not on approximate content. That is Escalio's principle: each exercise is tied to the child's actual HarmoS level, so that revision matches what is expected in class.