Ecole International Bilingue in Joncheres - anyone's children in this school?

[Belisha]

Hello! We are moving to Paris this December and it has been a time of worry and woe trying to find a school for our 9 year old daughter. Since we may be leaving in a year and a half for another country, we wanted to put her in a bilingual / international school for the meantime. The only school that has a spot for her in January is Ecole International Bilingue in Joncheres, which is said to be a 50-50 bilingual program. Does anyone have any feedback about this school? For the amount they are asking we'd like to be sure that she will be getting a good bilingual education... Thank you in advance for any helpful advice.

The school has only been open a year. It's housed in the old junior school of the British school of Paris. It's all I know.

There is an expat group on Facebook called two fat expats.maybe try there or other Facebook groups

Thank you - will do that.
If anyone else has any info though please don't hesitate to share!

My children aren’t schooled there but I have friends whose child is there and there are happy with it. However I have also met two other families who were not happy. One moved her child back to Malherbes in Le Vésinet and the other to BSP in Croissy sur Seine. Some people are happy with Trillium too.

EIB de la Jonchère has absolutely no accreditation from any official agency. You are at the absolute mercy of the proprietor when it comes to curriculum and standards.

Ask these people
www.messageparis.org/public_website/index.php

Join the group English speaking mums in Paris on FB. Jonchères is kinda the middle of nowhere.

The EIB group of schools belongs to a private equity backed Spanish company, NACE. Some of the EIB schools are French sous contrat (state accredited and subsidized) schools, but the French accreditation only covers the part of the curriculum that is the French national curriculum. The concepts of international standards, norm referencing and accreditation are very poorly understood within the EIB group. EIB de la Jonchere claims to be a a French-English bilingual school following the French National curriculum but the reality is that the school has no recognised curriculum and is not accredited or inspected by any external agency. A child enrolled at this school will not be able to move on easily to another school because the curriculum is not aligned with any other. The EIB group lacks market understanding and does not benchmark competitors or align with known standards.

École Jeannine Manuel (EJM) is a fully accredited bilingual school that is inspected by many agencies and tries to align with best practice. It’s not perfect - the French schools market is immature and uncompetitive and so all schools tend to be a bit behind the times - but it isn’t dangerous in the way the EIB schools are.

Thanks for all your feedback! I’ve decided not to send my child here.

I would add that teachers at Ecole Jeannine Manuel in Paris have also been under a great deal of pressure, but of a different sort to those at EIB. Teachers at Ecole Jeannine Manuel are paid normal French state teacher salaries but are expected to meet the standards of international schools on many dimensions of performance. They are crumbling under the pressure.

Hello Belisha, Which school had you decided on instead?