Switzerland · Villars

Aiglon College, a mountain boarding house that will send you the franc figure

Chesières sits above Villars at about 1,200 metres. The school will send a tuition document. We will not borrow a number from a directory.

externat et internatmixteRecherché 31/08/2026

Site officiel Suisse guide

Ce portrait est encore en anglais. Les autres langues arrivent école par école.

Programme tel que l’école le publie:IB Diploma Programme in Years 12–13 · Pre-IB in the years before · Aiglon High School Diploma (NEASC-accredited)

Langues d’enseignement:English

Aiglon College sits in Chesières, above Villars-sur-Ollon, at Avenue Centrale 61. The admissions page says Geneva airport is about an hour and a half away, and that the public bus stop is called Chesières – Aiglon College, next to the school. Founded in 1949 by John Corlette, it is wholly owned by a non-profit association that exists to run the school on his aims. The current School Director named on the homepage is Nicola Sparrow.

The school’s own glance page prints 400 students, 65+ nationalities, and an average class size of 12. The learning page adds 23 languages. Other tiles on that page sit as numbers without a sentence we can safely label. Ask admissions which snapshot is current.

It is a mountain school that also takes day children in the youngest years. That combination is the first thing to get straight. If you need a Tuesday pickup in Villars, the junior houses will talk to you. If you need a closed boarding week in January, that is the rest of the campus.

Who it is for

Admissions says the process is selective but “untraditional.” Applicants are read against the Guiding Principles: challenge, respect, responsibility, diversity, and service. The school wants to know whether a child can access a rigorous curriculum, live in the mountain environment, and flourish in a boarding community that is international on purpose.

It is not a day school that happens to have dorms. Day places are published for Years 3–4. Boarding starts in Year 5, in the junior houses. From then on the house is the unit of life: meals, laundry, exeats, Sunday returns, and the person who notices if a child has gone quiet. Day students in later years still belong to a house — the 2026–27 Guide is explicit about that — but the rhythm of the place is boarding.

The FAQ list is useful because it names the questions families actually ask: Can I choose my house? Can I have a single room? Can a child come for a term? Can they stay in the holidays? Is Year 13 entry possible? What if they need extra time in the entrance assessments? What if they need learning support? Read those answers on the school site; they move. The existence of the questions tells you the shape of the place.

Aiglon is also not for a child who needs the sofa. The Good Schools Guide line the school quotes on its admissions page is the school’s own warning: “Not for the sofa-bound, it demands independence and a healthy respect for nature.” We are not endorsing a directory. We are noting that Aiglon chose that sentence.

The campus you can actually picture

Chesières is a village, not a city campus. Visitors need a guest badge. If you book a hotel, the school asks you to say you are visiting Aiglon. There is a campus map and a virtual tour on the admissions page. Use them, then still walk the slope.

Junior School has sat on the upper campus since 1991. The Junior School Director, Stuart Hamilton, describes a corner of campus with its own residential teams. Youngest students are accompanied by teachers when they move around the wider site. Juniors use Chromebooks in class, with software the school says is there for safe, supervised access.

The houses are the architecture that matters more than the view. Junior boys are in La Baita; junior girls in La Casa. Each has a residential houseparent and assistant, plus a teaching tutor team. The homepage splits the rest of campus into junior houses (it labels the band ages 6–13), senior girl houses (14–18), and senior boy houses (14–18). Alumni stories on the same homepage name houses including Delaware, Le Cerf, Exeter and Alpina. Ask which house is current for your year and gender; houses are not a brochure decoration.

The Guide is unusually practical about the week. New students, boarding and day, and returning Year 9s arrive on the Friday of arrival weekend. Other returning boarders arrive Saturday 11:00–14:00. After holidays, boarders return Sunday 14:00–18:00. Junior day students drop at the main entrance of La Baita between 07:30 and 08:00, using the drop-off by the Belvedere car park, not the road above the house. Day students in Years 5–8 may stay until 18:30 and must report to their assigned house. Senior day students can be dropped at their house or the Forbes car park, or make their own way, and must be on campus for morning commitments.

An exeat is a weekend away with a parent, guardian, or responsible adult. Ask how many, and how a child who lives in Singapore actually uses them.

How the day is organised

Think in two schools on one mountain.

Junior School, Years 3–8. The school names two bands: Wonder Years (ages 7–11) and Discovery Years (ages 11–14). The academic line is literacy, numeracy, critical thinking and creativity — “classical and progressive,” in the school’s words. Discovery Years also learn a musical instrument as part of the ordinary timetable. All juniors have Chromebooks.

The outdoor piece is not optional colour. Years 3–4 have a weekly Mountain Day, developed with the Bear Grylls Survival Academy: local huts, rivers and forests, shelter and fire, paired with classroom work such as soil and deforestation. Each term has a seasonal Alpine skill set. Older students move into expeditions, Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award work, and independent trips. The learning page says students are in the mountain “classroom” every weekend.

Senior School, Years 9–13. The educational programme is described as multidisciplinary. The Aiglon diploma is not only classroom marks; students must complete the holistic programme. Years before the Diploma include a Pre-IB curriculum that the Guide says is meant to build inquiry, independent learning, subject exploration, and an assessment style that looks like the IB.

Years 12–13 are the IB Diploma: six subjects, three higher and three standard, plus Theory of Knowledge, the Extended Essay, and CAS. The Inspiration Years page says the school adopted the full Diploma in 2010. It currently prints that all 66 students entered for the exam passed, and that Aiglon “ranks in the world’s top 50 IB schools.” That is the school talking about itself — not a forecast. Alongside the IB, every graduate can take the Aiglon High School Diploma, accredited by NEASC. The Guide is plain: a student can pursue the IB Diploma or the High School Diploma; in some cases the school requires the High School Diploma only. There is also an “IB Diploma on contract” route for students whose IGCSE results or conduct were uneven. Those are counselling conversations, not things you decide from this page.

English is the language of the school. The learning page’s “23 languages” is the community, not the classroom medium.

Houses, skiing, and the extras that are not extras

Boarding is roommate life. The Guide says all students change roommates during their time at Aiglon, and that living with friends from many countries is the point of the ethos. Houses have kitchens stocked for snacks and sandwiches; croissants, fruit and biscuits appear at coffee and tea. Students have key access to their own house and should not visit other houses without permission outside free time. Day students get a house key, use of the common room and kitchen, and a place to leave a few belongings.

Skiing is PE and weekend life, not a holiday add-on. The school uses the regional Magic Pass. It purchases the pass for all boarding students as part of school fees. Day families buy their own. Ski hire is overseen by staff: the Guide says rental should cost no more than CHF 700, accessories up to CHF 300, and the student account should not exceed CHF 1,000 without parent permission. Weekend lessons run in beginner, intermediate, advanced and snowboarding groups. Junior weekend ski is Sundays only.

Music is similarly structural. The learning page says more than 280 private music lessons happen on campus each week. The Guide calls Aiglon the first accredited All-Steinway School in Switzerland, with Steinways in classrooms, practice rooms and houses, and a Steinway Model D in the Moghadam Campus Hub. ABRSM and RSL awards are the exam routes named.

Core trips are inside tuition, the trips page says. Wider-experience trips that sit partly in the holidays are extras.

How a child actually gets in

Five published steps: enquire, visit, apply, interview and assess, decision.

Start with an enquiry. The current admissions page names Associate Directors Pretima Farrant and Anita Wahli, Admissions Officers Sarah Popplestone, Andréa Riviere, Assem Shakirtova and Emma (Yumeng) Zhang, and James Shaw, Director of Service, Community & Admissions. Confirm the live list; names move.

A visit is the normal path. All campus visitors need a guest badge. The FAQ list asks whether every applicant must interview and assess on campus, whether you pay a registration fee before visiting, how to prepare, and what happens if a child needs extra time. Read the live answers. We are not inventing a remote-assessment rule from a heading.

The public admissions page does not print a closing date. The 2026–27 Guide is more operational: applications up to one year ahead, then through the year if space remains; the Admissions Committee offers accept, waiting list, or decline once a month. Houses fill. Year 13 from nowhere is its own FAQ. Term-only stays are another. Ask those two before you pay anything.

Re-enrolment is not automatic. Every January the school says whether a child is invited back. Parents must accept or decline by 15 February.

The decision is holistic against the Guiding Principles. The school will not reduce that sentence to a cut-off score on this page, because it does not publish one.

Swiss residency for a boarding child is a FAQ of its own: “Will the school organise a Swiss residency permit for my child?” Ask admissions to walk the permit, not a relocation agent’s memory of 2019.

Money, which the open web will not print

Aiglon does not publish a franc tuition grid on the public website. The Helpful Resources page links a Tuition Information document for fees, financial conditions and payment. The 2026–27 Guide says the Board of Directors updates tuition once a year, each January. Newly enrolling families are told next year’s fees exist from January. Ask for that booklet. A directory’s guess is not a source.

What the school does print:

Core programme trips are inside tuition. Holiday-adjacent experience trips are extra.
Boarders’ Magic Pass is inside fees; day families buy the pass.
Ski hire: the Guide says rental should cost no more than CHF 700, accessories up to CHF 300, and the student account should not exceed CHF 1,000 without parent permission.
Uniform and kit packages have their own Guide chapter.
Insurance differs for boarding and day; the booklet has the tables.
The Guide says Aiglon offers a small number of full scholarships for families who cannot afford any costs — merit-based, lasting through graduation pending annual review, covering tuition plus extras so a scholar can join trips. Timelines sit in a separate scholarship brochure.

A first-year boarder is not “tuition.” It is the booklet total — boarding or day, clothing package, insurance, ski, music, optional trips — minus whatever a scholarship letter actually says.

Support, and the questions the FAQ already admits

The FAQ list includes specific wellbeing or learning-support needs, extra time in entrance assessments, medical facilities, and what happens if a child is unwell. The Health Centre manages planned appointments for boarders through the house team; day students use it for urgent situations, the Guide says.

Aiglon is a mountain boarding school with a small average class. That is not the same as a specialist SEN school. Bring current reports to the enquiry and ask, in the room, whether the learning-support team can staff what your child actually needs — and whether that changes the boarding recommendation.

Meditation and expeditions have been “at the core of Aiglon life since the school’s inception,” the homepage says. Test whether that sentence is a comfort or a problem for this child.

Affiliations the school names

The affiliations page says Aiglon participates in CIS and NEASC accreditation programmes and is authorised as an IB World School for the Diploma. It lists SGIS, the Alliance for Sustainable Schools, Google Reference School (first in Switzerland, it says), Round Square as a founding member, Cleantech Suisse (objectives with the Confederation through 2029), the Boarding Schools’ Association, Swiss Learning (since 2009), National Online Safety, COBIS, ISBA, CASE, the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award, IAPS, and HMC. The school also holds the Eco-School label and says refurbishments follow the Swiss Minergie standard.

Those are memberships and claims on the school’s own page. Confirm the live accreditation cycle; they move.

What to ask on the stairs

Ask whether your child would be day or boarding in the year you actually need, not the year in the brochure. Ask which house, and whether you can choose. Ask how many exeats a family in another time zone realistically uses. Ask how Mountain Day and weekend expeditions sit next to a child who is not yet sure-footed. Ask whether the path is full IB, IB on contract, or the NEASC diploma only — and who decides. Ask what the current IB cohort’s published average is, then remember it is not a forecast. Ask for the Tuition Information document in the same email as the visit. Ask about the residency permit. Ask what happens if the posting ends in March.

If you live in Villars, ask how a Year 6 day student spends the hours until 18:30. If you do not live in Villars, ask whether a day place in Years 3–4 is even the conversation you think it is.

What we are not claiming

We are not saying Aiglon is the best mountain school in Switzerland. We are not guessing a waitlist. We are not printing a 2026/27 franc tuition. We are not treating a homepage IB counter as your child’s result. We are not ranking CIS, NEASC or Round Square.

Read the current Aiglon Guide and write to admissions before you resign a flat in another country. This is a map. The mountain still has to be the right Tuesday.