The Stellwerk test: which cantons make it compulsory

The question of which cantons make the Stellwerk test compulsory has no usable answer on the Swiss web. What you find are official PDFs from various years, forum posts and undated lists. That is risky, because the status genuinely changes: one canton abolished its obligation only recently.

The overview below was checked canton by canton at the relevant cantonal education office on 13 September 2026. Where a compulsory status could not be found in the wording of the official page, the table says so. An honestly marked gap is more useful than an invented row.

Why there is no simple national answer

If you have come to Switzerland from a country with a national curriculum and national exams, this is the first thing to unlearn. Education in Switzerland is a cantonal matter. There are 26 cantons, each with its own school law, its own school types, its own names for them and its own decisions about which assessments pupils sit. There is no national school test.

That has a very practical consequence. A family moving from Zurich, where Stellwerk 8 is compulsory for the second classes of lower secondary school, to Aargau, where Stellwerk does not appear at all, does not merely change address. The child meets a different school system, with different streams, different transfer rules to the Gymnasium and a different set of assessments. Nothing carries over automatically, and nobody will send you a letter explaining that.

What Stellwerk actually is

Stellwerk is an assessment of where a pupil currently stands, published by the Lehrmittelverlag St. Gallen, the teaching materials publisher of the canton of St. Gallen, which built the task pool together with the Pädagogische Hochschule St. Gallen, the cantonal university of teacher education. It is adaptive: the tasks adjust to the pupil’s answers as the test runs, so the value it reports is the difficulty of the tasks mastered rather than the number of correct answers.

It is based on the Lehrplan 21, the shared curriculum of the German-speaking cantons, and covers mathematics, German, French, English and, since the 2023/24 school year, Natur und Technik. There are three runs, Stellwerk 7, 8 and 9, taken in class 7, 8 and 9 of lower secondary school, at roughly ages 13, 14 and 15.

Stellwerk 8 is the one that matters most, because the 8. Klasse is the second-to-last year of compulsory school, at roughly age 14, and it is the year in which apprenticeship applications are written. In Switzerland an apprenticeship is not a fallback for pupils who could not manage the academic route. It is the route most school leavers take, it leads to the Berufsmaturität and from there to the universities of applied sciences, and applications for a place are made a year ahead. A measurement taken in the 8. Klasse therefore lands in the middle of a real decision.

The overview, as at 13 September 2026

How this table was built

The starting point is the download page of the Lehrmittelverlag St. Gallen. Under canton-specific information it carries a link to the responsible cantonal office for every participating canton. On 13 September 2026 that was ten cantons: Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Bern, Lucerne, Nidwalden, Obwalden, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen, Schwyz, Zug and Zurich.

Those ten links were then opened one by one and searched for the wording on compulsory status. Only where the cantonal page itself speaks of obligatory, binding or to be carried out does the table say yes. Where the page describes the test without declaring it binding, the table says not documented.

What is missing from that list is striking: Thurgau. The canton used Stellwerk, abolished the obligation from 2025, and now no longer appears in the publisher’s canton overview either. Ten cantons plus Thurgau make up the eleven that older sources talk about, which is why those sources now read one canton too generously.

What “not documented” and “not verifiable” mean here

Not documented does not mean voluntary. It means that on the day of the check, the canton’s official page carried no sentence asserting an obligation. In Bern, for instance, the education and culture directorate sets out the cost coverage and the time window in detail, but says nothing on that page about whether participation is binding. In Obwalden and Nidwalden the pages describe the use of Stellwerk 8 and 9 in the career choice process without using the word.

Not verifiable is the weaker case again: the source could not be read at all. For Appenzell Ausserrhoden the publisher links to the electronic handbook of the compulsory school. On 13 September 2026 that page returned a 404 error, so the status stays open. For Schaffhausen the cantonal school portal serves its content through a login system and could not be counter-read directly that day. The editorial team’s own enquiry at the cantonal education office pointed towards an obligation there, but without a readable primary source the row stays marked as not verifiable rather than as a yes. In those cantons, the school is the place to ask.

That distinction is the whole point of this page. A list that quietly turns an unreadable source into a confident answer is worse than no list.

Compulsory does not mean the same thing everywhere

The most interesting observation from the cantonal pages: even where an obligation exists, it covers different years. Zurich puts it most clearly and writes that only the running of Stellwerk 8 is compulsory, for the second classes of Sekundarschule. The word “only” carries weight there, because Stellwerk 9 in Zurich is not covered by the obligation.

St. Gallen goes one step further and differentiates by school type. In the Sekundarschule, German, French, English and mathematics are binding; in the Realschule, German, English and mathematics are binding, with French there only a recommendation where it has been chosen.

When the test takes place

The cantons set time windows within which schools choose their own date. The windows fall in spring and differ by weeks.

For families that means the exact date comes from the school, not from the canton and certainly not from a guidance site.

What parents and young people need to know in practice

Stellwerk is a school instrument, not a private aptitude test. Nobody registers themselves, there are no test centres, and the appointment falls during lessons. A test in mathematics, German, French, English or in one part of Natur und Technik costs CHF 10.00 per pupil, and the Stellwerk plus variant costs CHF 7.00.

Put that figure next to the Multicheck and the biggest difference between the two procedures is visible at once. The Multicheck costs CHF 60 to CHF 100, is booked and paid for by the family, and is sat at a test centre. Stellwerk costs ten francs, is booked by the school, and happens in the classroom. Parents who have just read about the Multicheck often assume Stellwerk must be a cut-down version because it is so much cheaper. It is not a cut-down version. It is an instrument a canton buys for all its schools at once.

In the canton of Bern the education and culture directorate covers the cost for mathematics and German in the eighth and ninth school years until further notice. In Obwalden, participation is voluntary for young people with adjusted learning objectives in the subjects concerned, which shows that even a binding test has exceptions.

A Stellwerk profile is also not an application document in the way a Multicheck certificate is. It is produced for planning support within the school. Whether and to whom you show it is your decision.

If your canton is not on the list

Most German-speaking cantons are not on the Stellwerk list, and that is no oversight. Basel-Stadt, Basel-Landschaft, Aargau, Solothurn, Glarus, Graubünden, Uri and Appenzell Innerrhoden do not appear there as of 13 September 2026, and neither do the French- and Italian-speaking cantons. Pupils there will as a rule not receive a Stellwerk profile.

That does not mean nothing is measured in those cantons. Other school assessments exist; in its own comparison the Multicheck provider names the performance tests Check S2 and Check S3 alongside Stellwerk. Which instrument runs in your canton is answered more reliably by your child’s school than by any list on the internet.

Two misunderstandings are persistent. First: a missing Stellwerk profile is no disadvantage when looking for an apprenticeship, because training companies in those cantons do not expect one. Second: Stellwerk and the Gymiprüfung have nothing to do with each other. The entrance exam for the Gymnasium, the academic upper secondary school that leads to the Matura, is a separate procedure regulated by each canton, with its own dates.

What has changed in recent years

The situation moves more than most guidance pages suggest. Three datable changes explain why older overviews are wrong today.

Anyone reading an undated source cannot know which of those states it reflects. That is why every row in the table above carries a check date, and why the check date also appears where the answer stayed open.

The overview will be updated as soon as anything changes in a row. If you notice a discrepancy with your own experience of the school, you are as a rule right: the cantonal office is always the stronger source.

Stellwerk and the Multicheck get confused constantly

The two procedures come up in the same conversations but have little to do with each other.

The Multicheck provider puts the difference this way itself: Stellwerk examines current school material and shows where somebody stands in relation to the learning objectives, while the Multicheck additionally records cognitive ability and is built around a specific occupational field.

Where to check the status yourself

For the current position in your own canton the shortest route runs through stellwerk.ch, menu item Downloads, section on canton-specific information. There you will find the direct link to the responsible office for each canton. When a canton changes its practice, that list usually changes first.

How the test works technically, and why the 200 to 800 scale is almost always read wrongly, is explained in understanding Stellwerk 8. What role aptitude tests play in the search for an apprenticeship overall is set out in the overview of aptitude tests for an apprenticeship. Anyone who wants to get to know the task types that keep coming up in aptitude tests can take the free test; it is a self-assessment and replaces neither Stellwerk nor an assessment by a qualified professional.