Going back to the Uk (just for a while!) from France! Help, huge school issues!

[rosbif]

Hello all

We are going back to the UK for two years from Sept due to DH job. We are a bilingual family and DT's are six years old and currently in an exclusively French school. They are doing very well academically but clearly their written and reading French is better than English. They speak both languages fluently though. They are in CP. I have discovered this week that they will enter Year 2 in the UK as they have an October birthday - this means that they will be effectively repeating a year but in english. On one level I think this is good for them as it will give them time to get to grips with the English element but DH is having a fit. He is concerned, and so am I, that when we come back to France in 2 years they will be in a lower class level than they would have been if they hadn't gone to the UK. It appears that we will need to follow the CNED courses (distance learning) to enable them to come back into the 'right' aged class iykwim! I am worried that this is far too much work for them and wondered if anyone else had ever been in a similar situation. Thanks so very much,

Two sources: DD's own school and a friend's experience taking her children out of school in France and putting them in school in Greece for a year. She had to get them to do the CNED so that they had a proper French report if she wanted to put them straight back into their proper year at school in France. The important thing is the report, in fact.

Thinking back, my friend said the CNED wasn't very onerous. But her children are super bright, so maybe that isn't reliable data

Gosh, I went away and came back to all this useful info! You are spot on BonsoirAnna, I think we do need an 'official' report from the CNED so we are going to go down this route. The UK school seem to be very on the ball and will tailor work to ability readily, the problem occurs potentially when we come back here and are highly unlikely to be anywhere with international school provision. We are not going anywhere in the UK with French or bilingual schools either. I think they will cope fine with the work, it just seems a bit injust to be landing 6/7 year olds with normal school and extra French work, maybe they will thank us one day when they have brilliant bilingual jobs!

Rosbif, kids here who are not british but go to a british based prep school, often go to their mother tongue/bilingual school on certain afternoons or after school to keep up. They don't seem to mind at all. Perhaps you could negotiate with the UK school to give the dt's a couple of afternoons off to do their CNED with you, during afternoon sessions where they would be doing art or country dancing or something like that!

Thanks, that is a great idea, also thinking French grandparents will be very keen to help with the CNED courses when they come over.

er, DD is one of 4 or 5 Yr2 girls doing literacy with Yr3-4s, so streamed at age 6.