French private schools: how does it work`?

[usuallydormant]

My DS is currently going into GS in a lovely public school in our village. We're really happy with the school so far and had evisaged him staying there all the way up. He doesn't have any apparent learning problems so far. We don't evisage moving from France.

However, it seems that the feeder colleges, and particularly the lycées around us are not particularly great. It's a rural community and I assume the intake is very mixed. On the other hand, there are some big towns around us where there are lycées with excellent results. BUT they are private and from what I have heard, unless you are already in a private school, the chances are you won't get in.

So, now I am wondering if I need to think about moving DS to the local ecole privé to maximise his choices. He may not be suited to a academic school but I don't want to cut off the option. I think I have (another) big learning curve coming up.

Does anyone have any good links/references to the french secondary school system for dummies or experience, especially outside Paris? This whole ecole privé thing has me all confused.

I am in Paris.

French state education is going down the drain, and very fast. While there are still some excellent state collèges and lycées, if you are hearing bad things on the grapevine about your local state secondary provision, pay attention, especially if you have a private school alternative.

There is very little information out there about schools as a whole. You have to do your groundwork yourself for your local area. What you need to do is to make a shortlist of all the private primaries in your area that you could reasonable get to every day, and suss them out by talking to parents. You might also need to get your skates on re applying in the autumn term as applications often need to be filed before or around Christmas time, especially for CP.

The école privés have exactly the same system as the public - it just runs along side it. It is possible to swap over once your child reaches college, but that does depend on there being a place. Our college is starting to get over subsribed so I don't think they are taking state school intake this year.

Around here the biggest difference I see is in the behaviour of the children. The children in the école privé tend to come from families where discipline is important, and they back up the teachers rather than go against them. Whilst there is a Catholic element it is very small.

If you do want to move your DS then making sure he does the CP year in the school you want him to stay in; our directrice is not keen on children swapping over otherwise, though she does allow it. Changing children over during the school year is frowned upon, but again does happen in exceptional circumstances.

Our fees are very low (16? per month) but I think 25? is more normal. College is a bit more expensive, but not alot.

Bonsoir - that may be the case in Paris, but here in the sticks you could ring up the day before school starts and still get a place.

Thanks. We do have a ecole privé in the next town for primary but as I said he is currently in a really fantastic school so my preference would be to move him later. If What a pain, we thought we were so lucky in being beside a great school! The good secondaries are a bit of a schlepp but doable. There are a lot of highly motivated parents around us (which is possibly why the local school is so good) but I have just started to hear chat of people moving schools and the clouds are now clearing.

All the local state secondaries have received average bac results while the privées are above average. We also have possibility of international school but i am reluctant to go down that route as the local population in those schools is very transient.

frenchfancy - I know there are some areas where that is true, but I don't know where the OP is and some French private schools in province are highly oversubscribed - we have had friends try to move from Paris and be unable to get private school places.

We are in Haute Savoie - I work in Geneva, as do a lot of the parents around so there is high motivation to do well. From what I have heard, you won't get into a private lycee unless you are in one of the feeder schools. I had naively assumed that everyone went public and the private schools were for people who wanted a religious aspect. ho hum...

Lycée général (the one where you do the bac général that leads to university and grandes écoles, that only 30% of the population actually get) is highly selective in France, so, yes, the collège you go to needs to prepare you adequately for a good lycée.

Dd has spent 4 years at the local college, and has her brevet with 'mention bien'. She's managed to get into the only lycée in the region that does the bac she wants to do, with moyen of 14, as has one other girl who wants to be an architect. Others with moyens of 17+ have gone to the nominated lycée for the college, which, unfortunately for them isn't very good. No-one in her year got a place at other better lycées.

Sadly for current pupils, the principal left in her final year, and the new one isn't as good. Not only that, but her lycée has become a college, and will go from 6ieme to bac+4, so will be more difficult for people to get in at post-brevet than it was before.

The problem is that I think it's really difficult, if not impossible, to second guess what the situation will be in 2, 5 or 10 years time regarding admission to lycées.