Cultured Views

Expectations and realities

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I wrote recently about my son and his decision to leave France and return to Australia. I thought I might go a little more into detail because it is important  to really consider your childrens options when you decide to live in another country. I wish we had given some things alot more thought before we came here, if only we had the benefit of hindsight at the beginning!.

We had assumed that going to school here would not be an issue. Now, many of us have seen those ‘move to France and never regret it’ shows on TV and especially noticed how easily the kids of those familys were accepted into the local schools. They glided into the system and, voila!, the kids were fluent in French within six months and topping their classmates as well.

It ain’t that easy!.

In reality this works if your kids are under 12. Once they are over that age they are attending College and Lycee. Those schools demand a very high degree of French for them to admit a non-French student. William had always been a good student but his French was minimal and absolutely no school in the Perpignan region would touch him. And he was only 16 when we arrived here.  We tried every College, and then Lycee, within a radius of 50 km’s and got the same answer…’no’.

So in effect William’s education stopped when we came to France. In desperation we finally paid a visit to Inspection Academique in Perpignan where the lady informed us we should just sod off back to where we came from. ‘Her’ schools were for French speaking kids only.

What I am saying is this, do not assume that France is the promised land. It is not. I do not know of any other country that refuses a kid education simply because of his/her language skills, but they do in parts of France. We were not prepared for this attitude and it has caused us a lot of grief. Especially for William.

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