Moving to France 🇫🇷

[tukker]

We are packing for the move in August. My daughter is 16 and looking forward to going to the local lycée, we have been in touch with them and they are very relaxed, I've emailed them to confirm dates for inscription in July but no reply?
I love the area we are moving to in Burgundy and we already have a house, so much to do, I just keep getting cold feet about it all! Some days I think its a great idea and other days I'm really anxious. Is this normal?

We came to France the month after dd's 9th birthday. She left in year 4 and 2 days later started in year 5 ie CM1. She went up to collège without redoubling where a new principal started extra French lessons for anglophones. By thé time she did her brevet they filled her form in with nationality 'française'. She was boarding after the first year. Not at all academic, she is a good communicator and that more than anything drove her to learn French. Within 6 months she was ahead of another girl who'd been here 2 years.
Although she got her bac, she dropped out of her degree. She was addicted to iPhones, possible PDA, and was recruited for bilingual SAV in English and French.
However, I think she was very lucky. Not many are dreaming in a foreign language and talking in that language in their sleep after only 6 months.

Good Luck OP.

Sorry to say this again but there is no way she could come here and pass the bac. Even if she repeats a year. It takes about 5 or 6 years for older kids to get anywhere near what they need. You need to continue her English education. If not she will fail every exam. English kids particularly find French grammar so hard. This isn't just talk about things I haven't experienced.

Can she take a ,2 hour written exam in French history 3 weeks after starting school? That is what will happen. And they won't be kind to her.

I diont mean to come across as unpleasant. What you are doing is great for your DD. But at 16 you really have to be realistic about what they can do in the two years left of education. She won't learn enough French to pass the bac. You have to look at alternatives.

I'm afraid I agree. One thing which shocked me in primary school was that they mark work looking for points to take off. Not points to add on.

Any spelling mistakes result in minus 1 or 2 points out of 20. An accent which is not long enough is minus 0.5.

Lots of kids get 0 out of 20 for work which pretty decent. But penalized for incorrect French.

We nearly made the move to France. We did lots of enquiries, and one thing that came up constantly was the unforgiving nature of the French education system.

You need to listen to all these knowledgeable posters and save your DD a difficult experience.

I am sorry to say but this is not a good idea. I went through the French education system including getting a Baccalaureate then I did my degree in London.

You need to speak and write the language to a really high standard to do the course work and to pass exams in France.

When you prepare for the Baccalaureate you have subjects like philosophy as part of the curriculum and you need to be able to write an essay for your exam which will require a really good grasp of the language and the ability to make a complex argument.

It is a very different system from the education you get here and there is no denying that French is much trickier to write for example than English. Unless you have studied Latin for example the way the language works is not easy to get right.

I would suggest spending time getting extra French lessons but continuing through her studies here or going for an international school in France.

Then she will have a chance to be able to in the future be able to do her degree in France if she wishes, once she has improved her language skills.

To be blunt there is a huge difference between understanding a bit of French from watching TV and being able to have a basic general chit-chat about everyday matters like the weather or what you are having for lunch to being able to write the language well enough to be in the mainstream education system.

If you with the ability to return fairly easily and restart her English education the. Why not. If you're going with no easy way back I'd say you're setting her up for a huge amount of stress and likely failure.

I'm quite surprised by the replies here. Not the stuff about a 16 year old struggling to start in a French lycee, which is definitely right, but the overall level of criticism of the French system. I have 3 kids who have gone through school in France (eldest 2 in lycee and youngest in college) and haven't had the same experience at all.

I'm not sure a lot of it is actually criticism...it worked for our DC but it was tough at times.

I think maybe some folks are trying to cut through a possibly a slightly idealistic view of the French system and pointing out that it can be very different to the UK one in many ways that maybe the OP and her DD can't begin to imagine.

This sounds like a nightmare OP - why are you moving to France? Speaking as someone who speaks French and has been to a French grande ecole.

I think that last point is what I mean. There seems to be a tendency for UKinFrance people to say that the French school system is brutal and set out the various ways in which it is less caring, child-centred and so on, but then conclude by saying that in fact their children were fine and it worked for them.

That feels like a disconnect to me, and I wonder whether it is caused by the fact that British people are seeing their children's education through a different cultural lense. So when kids get 0 in a dictation here that isn't the same experience as a child in the UK getting 0 in a spelling test, for example.

But, lummox, no-one has yet posted to say their non-French kid arrived in Premiere and successfully passed their bac.

Absolutely. As I said in my first post, everyone is obviously right about that. And I am very much going off topic - it is just something I have noticed before that everyone seems to feel that the French system is brutal in general terms but that their kids/they were actually fine.

I know lots of kids who are struggling including mine.

I know several kids who are seeing psychiatrists and psychologists due to stress and anxiety around school. These are primary aged kids.

My 8 year old was a school refuser.

There are regularly kids at the school gates in tears because of getting low marks. I also know of 1 who was late most days cos his parents couldn't find him. He hid so he couldn't go to school.

Many of the kids, including those top in their class, have tutors at home.

The pressure they were under was highly noticeable in my son's CM1 class. It was this year that counted as to whether they would be able to stay in this (private) school for 6eme. Once we got past Toussaint in CM2 and the school places were sorted out, the DC were all a LOT happier and nicer to each other.

Admittedly mine are in a high pressure private school (sous contrat) but I do think that 45 minutes daily homework in CE2 (8/9 year olds) and 90 minutes daily in CM1 (9/10 year olds) is excessive. As is giving 8 year olds 87 tests in one term...

My friend has a son in 4eme. She spends SO much time helping him with his homework its unbelievable.

I'm sorry to hear that things are hard for your children. There are certainly private schools near us with a similar reputation. If it is possible to ask this without sounding rude, why have you chosen a school with that ethos?

Fair question.

We didn't know. We knew it produced good results. Our experience of maternelle there was fantastic.

It got difficult from CP, which coincided with a change of director. Each year we just thought it was a difficult teacher/ our DC struggling. Then covid happened and life was difficult.

We wanted to change schools but DCs refused adamantly. My DCs also both have ADHD and dyspraxia which has only been recently diagnosed. The school isn't aware and we've had no complaints from the school.

They are changing schools this September though as we've had enough. It has been extremely difficult getting them out of that school though (same experience for several of our friends). Other local private schools are all full. And the public schools have told us our DC aren't priority as they're coming from private.

Despite the struggles and tears, I will say my DC have an excellent academic level.

That's really interesting. The point about getting stuck in the private system is one that I think a lot of people are not aware of - it can be even harder at lycee level, when you may well want to look more widely, because as you say there is priority for the children from state schools.

It is really hard to know how much weight to give to children's wishes at primary age (leaving aside any complications relating to a particular country's system). Well done for navigating a way out, and I really hope that you find somewhere that they are happier.

Thank you. I hope so too 😊

‘I have emailed them…..but no reply’

Take this as an omen.

What is the plan longer term? That you all stay for a while and that she carries on her studies in France at uni? She will need to have a sound basis in all subjects (and obviously excellent French). Are you sure she can achieve this in two years? If you only plan to go for a year and see it as a way to experience a new culture and learn French, fine (but do stick to seconde perhaps to remove that level of stress).
I concur with other PPs: expectations are high, and there will be no support in place so you need to have a plan in place if your daughter starts struggling. It is a very sink-or-swim sort of culture.

To add some positives 😀if you can see this as a 5-year plan, your DD can have an excellent and free education through to two years of Classes Prepa and would be well integrated.

So long as she does not do BFI, she can do English as one of her Specialites for Bac.

life in Bordeaux region can be gorgeous and IMHO much safer and nicer than Paris at the moment, and much more on the horizon to be in the EU than in little england.

How have you organised the Visa to move to the EU or did you already have EU citizenship?

OP, your daughter sounds brilliant, but she's still only 16! I know that when I was that age I would have absolutely loved the idea of moving to France and going to a lycée (I still like the moving to France bit, though sadly totally impossible for us), and I would've been very hesitant to drop back a year. I was also a talented linguist, self teaching, got a very high mark in A level French, etc. I would've thought I'd love being a lycée student and perfecting my French...!

But 16 is 16. Teenagers are so prone to dreaming and idealising... She probably needs you to make the decision for her, based on the experiences shared with you in this thread.

@blacklavendar how would she get into the classes prépa though. There is high demand for pretty much all prépas and if your dossier isn't good (and that would include the first term in première) then you wouldn't get a place.

My dd is very talented in languages. She got A* in French, German and Spanish and A level Spanish grade A in only 1 year. Also studied Latin but did not do GCSE in that. She went to college in France for 3 months and found it very hard. She said the speed at which everyone speaks all the time is difficult. Learning history in French she found to be hard. Concentrating all of the time so hard made her tired. Unless your dd picks things up really fast she will struggle. French colleges do not make allowances for foreign students. They have very high standards.