Off to School - Thinking of putting your child into a French State school?

Written by Riviera Reporter

You can’t just stroll in a couple of days before the beginning of the term. Jill Penton-Browne explains.

It’s mid-May and both kids and their teachers are already relishing the prospect of the long summer holidays; parents may be less cheerful. But this is also the time when you should have made arrangements for the schooling of a child who’s due to enter the educational system – or be in the course of doing so. We’ve often discussed in these pages the choices open to expat parents: State school, French private school, international school. In all three cases you can’t afford to hang about. Our three international schools – in Mougins, Nice and Valbonne – are all bursting at the seams. It won’t be easy to get in this coming September.

“Turn up with the paper work in order”
And don’t imagine there’s no problem if you opt, as some parents do, for the French State system. You need to be making preparations well in advance. Obvious? Not to everybody. Selwyn Glick of the British Association in the Var told us that towards the end of last August he got a call from a newly arrived couple who, quite casually, enquired what they should do to get their eight-year-old son into primary school. The point of this piece is not to discuss the virtues and vices of Education nationale – lots of homework, (usually) no sport or music for example – but to indicate what you have to do if you’re putting a child into the system for the first time.

Whatever level is involved – nursery school (école maternelle), primary school, junior high school (collège) or high school (lycée) – you normally have to use a school within a certain distance of your home; choice is thus restricted.

Concessions on this point do happen but they’re rare. So what do you have to do? You get along to the local mairie and ask for the service des écoles. You’d better turn up with the necessary paper work in order. That includes:

The child’s birth certificate, translated into French if necessary and this has to be done (a racket, this) by an approved translator whose name will be provided ... by the mairie.
Proof of vaccinations (your doctor can do the necessary and provide the required certificate; I’ve heard of foreign documents being refused, by the way). A child born in France will have been issued with a livret de santé.
Proof of parental residence (for example, a utility bill).
Proof of parental identity (passport or – if you’ve retained it – a carte de séjour).
Proof of the child’s being insured (this isn’t officially obligatory but in practice it is so make sure your child has an assurance scolaire – costing around 30 for the year and the appropriate attestation.

“Some do well, others less well”
When he or she has been admitted to a school there’s no way of knowing how things will turn out. Some expat kids do well in French schools, others less well. A lot depends on the teachers. Some are attentive and encouraging with foreign pupils, some indifferent or even hostile. That’s a topic I’ll come back to in a future issue. Meanwhile, for detailed information in English on French State schools seewww.eurydice.org.

From Reporter 109 - June/July 2005

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