MFL year abroad in France

[AfterLeavingMrMacKenzie]

All being well, DD will be going to study in France this September for the 3rd year of her degree.

The university has put on a couple of information sessions for the students and given them a list of institutions with which they have exchange programmes.

They've said that with regards to funding (Turing) they don't know how much will be available but it won't be much and they don't know when they'll be allocating it.

I'd love to chat with other parents whose DC are doing a year in France or did one in the past.

DD doesn't have an EU passport.

When this cohort of 2nd year MFL students who are planning their years abroad were applying to university in 2022, universities hadn't yet been faced with the problems arising from the ending of Erasmus (2022/23 was the last year in which UK students could do an Erasmus 3rd year abroad. It was also the first year of Turing funding. There was some overlap in the two schemes).

And to me in Greece!

I have friends who have au pairs and they treat them brilliantly: 30 sq m flat with private entrance as well as connection to the family apartment, iPhone, cleaner, food, holidays...

Hi where is she going to do her MFL? My daughter also wants a year abroad in S America

No experience of France, but DS has just gone to USA for 6 months to complete his degree. He received £5500 from the Turing people.
The UK university was hopeless regarding information about accommodation etc. he went on 1st Jan and we only found out about when he could move in on 30th December, all very frustrating!

She could apply to different Academies eg Academy de Rennes. I used to work in secondary schools and there were language assistant jobs specifically for English speaking university students. One of the schools I worked at even provided accommodation - this was 10 years ago and before Brexit but it's worth a try

There's a central application system for this: https://assistants.france-education-international.fr

No experience of France, but DS has just gone to USA for 6 months to complete his degree. He received £5500 from the Turing people

Wow! Was the 6 months in the US mandatory for his degree? DD's friend is studying history and he wants to do a year in the US and I'd be a bit miffed if he gets funding but MFL students don't.

Hope that doesn't sound petty!

@AfterLeavingMrMacKenzie Turing funding is not given fairly regarding what’s mandatory. It’s given to those with least money. No: USA would not be mandatory but Turing puts that above a well off student doing MFL. It’s a shit show!

No uk uni sorts out your accommodation abroad. It’s what growing up is about.

@user1494050295 Oxford if she gets an offer, Durham if not. I think South America sounds brilliant, I hope it's easier to organise re visas etc. At least it won't have got MORE complicated like the EU has. Where is your dc/planning to go?

The time in USA is not compulsory. He had the option of USA or Australia, his university has a relationship with both.
The accommodation has been organised and provided by the American side of things, they sent videos but no further details.

One of my DNs got Turing funding for a totally optional year abroad for Physics in Norway. Erasmus funding was never designed to meet the needs of MFL students so there is no reason why MFL students should have priority over students in other subjects.

Students for whom a year abroad is mandatory should have priority for funding. That's common sense.

DD works all year round and will increase her hours over the summer to save some money towards her year abroad. She works in hospitality and would be happy to do so in France if the opportunity arose. Or tutoring. She definitely doesn't want to be an au pair or a language assistant and that's fine as I want her to enjoy her year (or 7 months).

@AfterLeavingMrMacKenzie Working in the EU is a lot more difficult now. Also at DDs uni, jobs in cafes and being an au pair, for example, were not accepted. They had to be more rigorous jobs. Hence many went to unis or became teaching assistants. Tutoring might be not good enough either. Mostly they need a cultural element and language acquisition at a reasonable level. The best bet is going to lectures in French in a Swiss uni.

Erasmus was used to fund third year abroad and absolutely MFL took priority for the funding. As you say, it’s mandatory. Turing is often based on family income as is in woefully short supply and not always fairly distributed in the unis. The “nice to go” students should not get priority but if they are poor and want to go, they get the money. It is killing MFL.

DD1 did a year as a languages assistante in a French lycee while Erasmus funding was still a thing. I'm just thankful that she had the opportunity.

Brexit sucks.

As I said earlier in the thread @TizerorFizz, DD wants to study at a French university, so she wouldn't expect bar work or whatever to count towards her degree.

While I have sympathies with the point of view that funding ought to go to students for whom the year abroad is mandatory, the fact is that it is not the case. Erasmus was very favourable for UK students because the number of EU students wanting to do an Erasmus exchange in the UK far outweighed the number of outbound students and hence most UK students going on a year abroad in the EU received Erasmus support. In fact, every year the number of outbound UK Erasmus students fell short. However, Erasmus was not designed with MFL students in mind or as a priority - basically UK MFL students got pretty lucky.

Being an au pair on a year abroad is about covering accommodation expenses and no university can legitimately prevent a student from choosing to au pair as a way of accommodating themselves. Being an au pair in France comes with an obligation to attend a course of some sort and is perfectly compatible with degree level study.

Erasmus definitely did provide accommodation in some destinations: at eg Freiburg-im-Breisgau in Germany and at Bergen in Norway there are halls of residence with priority application for Erasmus students, along the lines of first year halls of residence at UK universities. The reality is that local private rental markets are not always set up to accommodate short term private tenants from overseas and so institutional accommodation solutions are necessary.

For the medical insurance, this isn't travel insurance. It is full medical insurance including repatriation costs if needed. When we moved here, in 2021, it was £2k each per year. So please bear this in mind. It should be included when employed so make sure it is otherwise they will reject the visa.

And the paperwork and bureaucracy needed is infinite. And when you do any, double and triple check everything. Almost every interaction in our experience needed to be corrected and reprinted, from the car id number, to our names, dates of birth, even paying an accountant to do our taxes I had to correct his calculations and paying a translator to translate documents mistyped a name. They even got our names wrong when we were PACSed (civil partnership). I cannot stress this enough as when the paperwork doesn't match later on, you have to go right back to the start. Think 'computer says non'.

Student visas are more straightforward than permanent moves.

Yes but they still need the right medical insurance and the paperwork still needs to be correct.

You can normally buy an add on to family private health insurance - sometimes it's even included in the policy.

The OP asked if they can use normal travel insurance. So I responded that no they can't. And the cost of stand alone full medical insurance is very high so I noted how much it cost us.

It's far more than the cost of the visas. It should not be overlooked as an afterthought.

While MFL years abroad have become exponentially more complicated since Brexit, the visa and medical insurance are reasonably straightforward. Far, far harder is finding something interesting to do (work and/or study) and accommodation. Our DC did a gap year studying in Italy and tbh I haven't fully costed it but I think it was probably around £35k by the time fees and rent and living costs and travel had been paid.

The medical insurance is not straightforward.

Neither the embassy nor the TLS will advise on which ones were applicable, and in the time between buying ours and attending the TLS office, which was 10 days, the rules had changed and the visa was initially rejected as the insurance requirements were not met.

Which is why I responded. The reality of living in France is vastly different now to when you did a short stint here as you say, many years ago.