MNers with children at French schools...

[Bonsoir]

If you didn't see the documentary L'école à bout de souffle on France 5 on Tuesday evening, I highly recommend you do.

There is normally an interview - can be for parents and children, or just for the children, depending on the school. Catholic schools are very family-focused, both parents need to show up at the interview and make the right sort of supportive noises!

Bonsoir yes!

My ex and I both went along to the interview and made it clear we were supportive of her education and willing to get involved with the school as required. I think the fact we were there, together, and showing a united front definitely helped!

Something you can usefully do is to get your DS to read a lot in the next year, before the interview. Schools love pupils who read a lot and can talk about books with passion. The Ecole Alsacienne has a good reading list for sixième here. I am very sad and purchased all the books on the list about a year ago and am slowing making my way through them with DD (who is in CE1)

Private schools rely on the parents to help out with lots of things (not just fundraising, but also accompanying trips, maintenance work etc), so they try to size up the parents for willingness to get involved in extracurricular life...

We have been at two Catholic maternelles and for both we were interviewed, parents with the child.

At one, the directrice gave our DD a pencil and paper and asked her, quite lightheartedly, if she could draw a circle and then could she draw a straight line. My Dd got on with these drawing tasks while we answered questions, but I definitely noticed the directrice observing hiw my DD fared with this informal little test. My Dd has a December birthday, so she is young in her school year and this interview process was for PS, so she was actually only 1.11 at this point! (It was in the november before she started in PS ithe following September, at which point she was 2.8, IYSWIM).

We later moved to a different private Catholic Maternelle (closer to home, even more over subscribed) and the new school contacted the old school without our knowledge (or consent, but hey, thisis France!) and got the full lowdown on our DD's academic record. She was 3 at that stage :) .

Wow, Bonsoir that is quite a reading list for 11 year olds!

Greythorne - indeed, which is why I have got started quite early! If truth be told, I find that French books for 7 - 10 year olds are pretty dire, so I needed inspiration.

Greythorne - I think you have a world record beating school assessment age there! I have never, ever heard of schools in even London or NY assessing children with pencil and paper tasks at under two years old! DD was 2.5 when she was assessed by the directrice of her school - she had a provisional place, but the directrice did the assessments of the youngest children in Spring, to give them a chance to be able to say something!

Not much of foreign literature, there, eh? Surprise, surprise.

DS reads a lot at the moment, but it's more of Eragon, Lemony Snicket etc.

I feel like a horrible mother because I assumed that he'll go automatically to a public college closest to us so I never bothered much about occasional mediocre mark on his bulletin as I knew that he'll improve for the end of the year iyswim. I thought the competition starts at the brevet. And he can be lazy or talks in class...in the last bulletin the teacher wrote that what a pity it is that 'un eleve aussi brillant, cultive et intelligent' doesn't bother more with completing all his class assignments etc. Damn.

winnybella - if you can just make him more assiduous, it sounds like your DS would be a great candidate for a good school! And a comment like that isn't a problem if he does a turnaround between now and the summer and improves a lot.

Oooh, DD could draw a perfect face at 17 months. God, should I start thinking about sending her to private maternelle as well I have to say that the public nursery she's in right now is great.

Oh, he will improve

No, stop worrying about your DD! Lots of private schools don't even have a maternelle!

vitaminC can I come and teach at your university please? Or maybe I should change subject.

Lol, Tree, what do you teach?
I'm studying medicine, so maybe it's not a representative sample, but they're a whole lot more together than I was at that age!

Ohhhh so they've all gone through a Prépa and passed/hoping to pass a concours.

Yeah....I teach English which is very often code for 'I didn't know what else to do and it might be useful'.

No prépa required for medicine but yes; a very difficult concours at the end of the first year!

Lots of ex-pats seem to end up teaching :)
Still, it's not an easy option, as the CAPES/Agrégation is pretty difficult to pass! Well done!

Prépa is not required for medicine, but nearly all medical students in France are enrolled in prépa in first year.

Yes, Bonsoir but that prépa refers to a private tutoring firm which helps candidates prepare for the concours, not a selective study programme like the real classes préparatoires for engineering school, for example.

The medical prépas will take anyone willing to shell out ?3-4000 a year ;)

Tree are you planning to work on your PhD? In what field?

I am planning to but distinct lack of motivation and worrying that my subject isn't actually as interesting as I thought it was It's applied linguistics.

It's a bit different because in theory you can pass your first year of medicine without going to prépa. In the same way as in theory you can pass the concours for Sciences Po without going to prépa when you are in terminale. In theory...

At my uni, only around 40%-50% of students took a prépa and not all of them passed the concours, obviously!

There was no way I could have afforded either the money or the time (like I said I have 3 kids and am a LP), so I did without.

My uni has a very good tutorat system of its own, so there isn't really any need for extra tuition. Lots of the students who took one first time around didn't bother the second time (you can attempt the concours twice), because it didn't really add much, and some were giving out dodgy information (teaching things from previous years that are no longer in the syllabus, and therefore wasting precious revision time!).

I think it can be useful for students who are quite immature and need a formal structure to work efficiently. Most students who enrol do so to avoid any doubts or "what-ifs" if they fail. But most who did admit it didn't really help.

It's certainly a very lucrative business!

Oh, it acually isn't the worst college in Paris I think it's sort of the ok, but not great- brevet pass rate over 83%.