To wonder if UK lycees sometimes hinder the integration of French immigrant kids?

[Carla786]

I was reading Ben Judah's excellent book This Is London recently, about the relative integration of different immigrant groups in London. The focus was mainly on non-Western European immigrants, but there was some mention of the French immigrant population of Kensington.
I went to school there - my school was very near a lycee but I never thought much about it. I'm quite interested in France myself (my mum's a French teacher) and have several French friends (my school had a lot of European immigrants' children), I'm definitely not opposed to French people coming here. I'm just wondering if lycees are always helpful for integration. (Yes, I'm Gen Z- I know people will want to know why I'm on MN : I came for GC issues and stayed for the rest).

Generally we emphasise that it's important for immigrants to integrate with the existing population as much as possible. Lycees give French immigrants' children an education that follows the French curriculum, and I understand from what I've read are generally now composed of almost solely French children, though I understand the pupil cohort used to be more mixed in the past and maybe included more British children. If you grow up in a mainly French immigrant community and go to a lycee with mainly other French immigrant kids, how integrated will you be into the mainstream British population?
Generally when we talk about integration we focus on immigrant groups where sections are involved in crime or who mainly low-skilled. French immigrants are generally neither, so the lycee system isn't much remarked on. While I agree it's not a major concern, I still think it's worthy of comment.

We don't (I think) have lots of similar schools worldwide for the kids of Italian, German, Greek, Spanish, etc immigrants where they learn non-British curriculums. Yes, there are faith schools which sometimes overlap with ethnicity and have different curriculums (though I'd question that too- that topic's not for this thread, though).. I understand that lycees' educational standards are highly regarded & Brits or other immigrant nationalities sometimes send their kids there for that reason, esp since some run a parallel English curriculum(though as I said, the number of non-French pupils is much less now).

Still, I wonder how positive it is to have them if they're increasingly becoming nearly wholly French, and often used by families who are constantly on the move so that their kids can easily switch between lycees?

TLDR : AIBU to wonder if lycees may hinder integration of French immigrant kids if they now teach a French curriculum under the auspices of the French government to mainly French immigrant pupils who live generally in French immigrant-dominated areas? I'm definitely not saying they should be banned or anything, especially as UK state schools are generally bad at the moment..maybe there should be a push for a more mixed pupil cohort though?

Oh, that's surprising. Though I did see some threads on MN that said teaching style was more rote & focused on core subjects : also that extracurriculars weren't really a thing. Was that accurate for you?

English as a foreign language. Just like children in the UK might learn French at school. The children I knew at the lycee were completely bilingual, as were their parents.

Definitely. Surely these parents are probably not intending to stay?

I was thinking a similar thing recently re Ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools (NB: If any anti-Semites are lurking, this is NOT an invite to bash all Jewish schools, most of which are not like this & often have a cohort of non-Jewish pupils). There's a great BBC series focused on faith, Heart and Soul, and the episode Off The Derech was about teenagers who had left the very strict Hasidic community (this isn't the same as Orthodox Jews, it's much more strict). They had mainly spoken Yiddish at home and at school and so hadn't been fluent in English until leaving. As I say, this is a tiny minority, but no UK school should be allowed to let pupils leave without ensuring they're fluent in English.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p04n1x7p

Of course many European capitals have high levels of immigration.
Do you think that people should be able to choose their children’s school themselves, according to their own priorities, especially if they pay for it? That’s essentially what you’re asking.

The lycee not a UK school, though.

Of course I believe parents should be able to choose their child's school according to their priorities.

One can believe something should be allowed, while at the same time be critical of aspects of it. I've never called for any school to be banned.

It's in the UK : is it not under our jurisdiction at all?

No religious education - main ideas seen in history/geography or “civic education” but no class on religion.

I have French friends with children at the lycée. They've been here for decades and got citizenship after Brexit. And I know my friend feels part British having lived here for so long. I'd say pretty integrated as a family; both parents fluent in English with professional jobs, mix of friends. Kids went to local English language childcare. I think it was partly cultural that they went, partly because it's essentially a subsidised private school.

But yeah, not ex pats who plan to go back to France soon.

That's not quite true. Yes, other cities have a lot of migrants/expats, like Geneva, Paris etc. But London had more than most : 41% of Londoners were born outside the UK.

https://www.timeout.com/london/news/london-is-officially-the-most-diverse-and-inclusive-city-in-the-world-according-to-locals-062425#:~:text=Our%20capital%20topped%20the%20ranking,it%20as%20diverse%20and%20inclusive.&text=There%20are%20around%20300%20languages,born%20outside%20of%20the%20UK.

Interesting: do you know if the lycees they use have mainly French pupils? Or more of a mix?

@Carla786 Rubbish at extracurriculars, rubbish at sports. Pastoral care - forgeddaboutit. Rote learning? Well, I can still quote beautiful French and English poetry by heart, and am unafraid of public speaking, the Hegelian dialectic or a spirited argument.

No, it’s run by the French government, I think. My understanding is that French lycees around the world follow the same curriculum, so that you can leave one school and go to another and fit straight in. You won’t have missed anything. Though my knowledge is a little out of date now.

It’s 40.9% in Vienna, for example. Not sure the 0.1% makes much of a difference.

Not sure. I thought mostly French, but I don't know that. Her kids are teenagers. Although I have another British friend whose kids are in their 40s and went. Must have worked as one now lives in France!

I meant the total opposite!! that most probably don't stay long so it's totally reasonable for their kids to go to a French school.
You also still haven't addressed half my points (unless elsewhere in the thread, but unlikely), e.g. do you also object to the existence of the European Schools?

Plus, the notion that "Europeans arguably were able to take much more advantage of job opportunities here than vice versa" is totally incorrect (from personal experience and the experiences of MANY colleagues over the years), unless you mean out of Britons' traditional ineptitude in/poor attitude towards learning to speak other languages. In which case, yeah, Brits are/were less able in that respect, but that's down to their own incompetence and isolationism.

The children speak french at school and at home. They return to France to see family half terms, the whole summer and christmas. They struggle to speak English with me. Parents work for international companies, next move will be the US in 10 years or so.

I see...seems a shame, but otoh I guess as they're not planning to settle maybe it makes sense to minimise changes.

Yes that’s right. I’m not keen on sending my children to the lycee in kensington as it would mean they would lose their Britishness, but also I will be a non french speaker in amongst mostly french speaking parents, which gets annoying after a while.

It does annoy me though that:
-In conversations about immigration, ironically, DHs family and friends are very evangelical about integration and having French Values.
-Selective and racist outrage - this is exactly the same as, for example, an immigrant family coming here and speaking only their country’s language and not integrating. But since it’s French, and they are white, it’s all good.

Integration is quite easy really if the immigrants (or ex-pats or whatever you want to call them) themselves make an effort to integrate. This means adapting to the local environment and adopting the local customs to a degree where they can function within the existing society. Why move to a different country if you just want to maintain the habits from the country of origin to the extent that you need the home environment to be re-created in the new country? It just doesn't make sense. Presumably people move countries because the new country is attractive to them the way it is set up already. Otherwise why bother?
As regards schools, I simply assumed international schools were private in the UK so the market would dictate if it's worth setting up a particular new international school.
For what it's worth, in my personal opinion, it's a great opportunity to join an international school if possible. As a local, as a transient resident or as an immigrant.

It is. But there is no requirement to teach the English national curriculum.

it does rather seem that you can’t get your head round the existence of international schools and why they serve an important role in terms of continuity of curriculum.

The LCDG does actually submit to OFSTED inspection, although it is under no compulsion to do so.

Most people whose children attend International Schools have moved to a country because their employer has sent them there. There are good postings and bad postings. London is generally considered quite a good one, apart from the weather.

TBH this is the case in many British international schools. It's certainly true at the British School of the Netherlands as well. I have tutored children who were born in NL or have been there from when they were tiny children, and have attended the school from day dot, and leave at 18 barely able to string together a sentence in Dutch.
So what the OP says is not entirely untrue - it can happen that some families send their kids to such schools for the entirety of their schooling and leave totally unintegrated with the local community - but it's rare. It seems to be a peculiarity of the British Schools especially - other types of international schools don't seem to suffer from it nearly as much. British exceptionalism?

Me too. I don’t especially have an opinion but clicked as was very keen to hear why lychees would harm immigrants in some way

TBH by this point you're just coming across as silly, uninformed, and reliant on conjecture.
In fact, a total of 45 international schools in Paris - a much smaller city than London - probably makes for a higher average of international schools per square 10km.