"Motivation letter" for French maternelle private school application - speedy advice please?

[thereistheball]

This morning I met the Directrice of our local private school to discuss inscriptions for next September, when my daughter will be almost 3. I have not been here long, and hoped to find out more about what differentiates her school from the other local options, but she rather assumed that her school's reputation spoke for itself, explaining that there are 4 places left and hundreds of applications on her desk, so our application needs to be in today or first thing tomorrow to be in with a chance.

I have decided to go ahead with the application simply to keep my options open while I find out more about the various schools in the area. I need to supply a letter of motivation explaining why I want to send my daughter to her school. My difficulty is that I don't have any information to base this on, other than a vague sense that her Catholic establishment is very traditional. Has anyone written one of these letters successfully, or can you advise on the sorts of things she might want to hear? Thanks in advance!

Hmmm, I'm not really sure either as to what one would put in such a letter, but had a very similar experience to you when I tried to ascertain the school's educational philosophy! and when a Cuban friend of mine asked to visit she was told "we're not a real estate agency, you either trust our reputation or you don't"!

Are you Catholic? We're not but for ours they were fine with it and it was on a first come first served basis, but in your case maybe you could say you are keen for her to attend a school with such a fine reputation that will uphold the Catholic values to which you subscribe?

Can't think what else... hopefully someone else will come up with something!

I do think you're doing the right thing keeping your options open - we enrolled DS1 at the Catholic and the state school and left the decision to the last minute, though FWIW the Catholic one was absolutely fantastic.

Thanks. I have written something - will have to see if it works!