Joanna

Over 90% of house sales are to the French - so start with all the local agents and price the house at a sensible level.

There's lots of competition for any places going.  How it works is that thered is a bilingual college in Bordeaux called Cheverus and Majendi is the lycee de secteur for Cheverus so the pupils there have priority for places.  Thre is no saying how many places there are each year for pupils from other schools but the year my daughter tried there were 100 children going for 30 places.  They set a written exam to weed out all who aren't fluent in English then select on dossier.  If your son is reasonably intellegent and doesn't have bulletins from the school saying he does no work he should have a very good chance of getting in - I only know of one native English speaker who didn't get a place and thaat was because of her dossier. I know nothing about the internat for boys, the girls one has been recently refurbished and is a lot better than it used to be.

How extraordinary - I've educated three children here in a mixture of private and public schooling, town and deeply rural and I can honestly say that none of mine have ever come across this sort of prejudice from the teachers.  At one rural school my youngest got a lot of stick from the boys for being English but as she realised herself it had a lot to do with a)being a girl, b)being taller than they were and c) being much cleverer than they were and going to the top of the class in her first week. Obviously you can't  allow this to go on - have you tried talking to the school?  If your son is actually being given the wrong facts you've got a strong case for complaint.  If that doesn't get you anywhere have you considered sending him to a private school?  They really aren't very expensive, I'm out of date now but I do know that at the college we sent our children too the bill for the school meals came to quite a bit more than the bill for the tuition.  Most private schools are Catholic but even if you're very anti-religion you don't have to worry about children stuffed with dogma, private schools that receive state funding (and most of them do ) aren't allowed to have religious instruction in school hours and any religious stuff is voluntary anyway.

Wow, Thanks for that Bob - it would have been tragic after spending years waiting to get a decent cooker to find it was too expensive to use!

[quote user="Framboise"] Hmm, I am inclined to agree. We have a dual fuel range, gas hob burners with electric ovens and in retrospect I would much prefer all gas to this option.   Firstly electric takes ages to warm up properly before you even start cooking, secondly every time I use the big oven it "pops" the main fuse and thirdly whichever oven I use the meter goes haywire!   Given a choice I would certainly opt for all-gas next time.   [Www] [/quote] What make is it?  I've just bought a dual fuel range cooker - a Falcoln - and am now beginning to feel rather alarmed.  I've always used dual fuel cookers here but they've always been the conventional single oven type and I haven't noticed excessive electrictiy consumption even if they didn't work very well.  (Very cheap and not sealed properly so they stank).

Fi, from my own experience I'd really adivse you to think about whether making your children happy is going to include making local friends and speaking the langauge.  They won't learn much French if they go to an International School - even if half the lessons are in French there will still be so many native English speakers there that they'll speak English in the playground - and that's where children learn French, not in the classroom.  When my children arrived here there was a half English girl in the same class as my 7 year old who spoke good English, even though they were separated at the end of the term my daughter's French didn't become really fluent until Natalie had been moved to another part of the school and my daughter had to stop asking Natalie to translate. In addition there's the question of friends.  The chances are there won't be any children at the International school who are going to live close by, almost certainly none within a walk/bike ride away.  My kids went to a small private school when we arrived because we thought the smaller class sizes would be better.  It was only 7km away but even so there were no other children from our village there.  In retrospect I should have sent them to the village school for then they would have made local friends which only happened after child no 2 started to go to the local college. However if you think you might be going back to the UK sometime the International School is probably a good option. Incidentally all my three have done well here - there have been some problems along the way, no system is perfect, but all in all I'm very glad we brought them here.  And so are they.  They keep on saying so.

[quote user="Jura"] What's wrong with the local schools...? [/quote]   Jura, what's happened to you?  Are you actually saying something in France might be half way decent?

Are you planning to move here permanently?  Because if you are the chances are your children won't assimilate into the country properly if they go to the International school.  They won't get to know other local children, join in the local activities etc. 

If your income from the business is very low you'll have to continue paying URSAF but a few months later you'll get a nice little rebate (or quite large one).  Quite why you have to pay then be refunded is beyond me but at least they do give it back.

The 33% limit is post deductions and it's an insurance requirement and held to rigidly.  I know someone who tried to rent a flat costing nearly 3000 euros a month who was short on the 33% criteria by 72 euros a month, he offered a year's shortfall in advance but was still turned down.  There was absolutely nothing he could do except find somewhere cheaper.

[quote user="Jura"]. It does not cost these miserable bakers, tabac owners, supermarche/hypermarche, hairdressers,etc a darn centime to give these kids a few hours a week to just sit and watch them at work. . [/quote] Actually Jura it does.  To start with the enterises offering the stages are supposed to feed their stagieres, maybe it doesn't amount to much but it still costs.  More importantly the stagieres have to be supervised by one of the other employees, they have to be given work which doesn't put them at any risk, I suspect stagieres wouldn't be allowed in tabacs anyway, the people who are running small business have to cope with someone who knows nothing getting in their way and impeding them getting on with the job etc etc etc.  Sounds miserable?  Maybe.  But if you're a baker (not an easy job at the best of times) the last thing you need on your plate is another hassle in your already hard working life. In addition there is absolutely no point in doing a stage where the stagiere doesn't do anything but sit and watch - that's just demoralising and boring.  They have to be given work to do and it can take quite a lot of time sorting out suitable tasks for a stagiere, I know since I've done it.

Not proms as such, or what I understand proms are like from reading books such as Carrie, but all the colleges my lot went to had events at the end of the year, grande bouffe (of course) for parents and children alike, entertainment etc.  The lycees tended to join up for one big party where music was provided by student rock bands etc.

If she gets a place to study away from home in a state lycee she should get a bourse, aide logement etc so the financial burden on you shouldn't be too much. As far as your daughter doing a BTS in tourism is concerned I would advise her doing it only if she's really keen to work in tourism in the future.  The pay in tourism is lousy and there are a lot of kids doing tourism because they see it as a soft option.  According to my daughter it isn't at all and only those like her who are really enthusiastic are doing well. If your daughter is trilingual she should definitely go on to get a qualification - if she's really keen to venture into the marketplace has she thought about the idea of doing a BTS on alternance?  Half her time will be spent doing classes, half actually working in an office for which she should get about 60% of smic, so it's pretty hard work but can still be worth it.

If you look at the back of the Sud Ouest Dimanche they have as well as the weather forcast, the recorded temperatures for the same date 15, 30 & 50 years ago as well as the record highs and lows for the region.  So far all the extremes of both heat and cold seem to be in the 40's, 50's and 60's which surprised me. I've been here 15 years and where we are this winter's been pretty cold though today was glorious, but not that unusual imo, I always used to take the children to the Dune de Pyla in the Febraury break and it was always hot when we climbed up.

The basic answer is that without any add-on to her Bac she's going to find it very difficut to find any jobs other than waitressing, cleaning, being a self employed sales person etc - in other words any job that holds prospects and a salary that pays more than smic. One of my daughters decided not to continue in education after her bac, two years down the line and after a series of scut jobs she opted to do a BTS and is doing really well - finding out for herself what lay ahead if she didn't get a qualification focused her brilliantly. Of course if your daughter is really determined and self motivated she'll be fine - my eldest did a stage following around a 20 year old journalist from the local paper and he'd talked himself into a job when he was 17 and hadn't even got his bac so it isn't impossible to get a good job without masses of qualifications, it's a lot easier if you do have them. I don't see that there'll be any problem registering to find a job then going back to school, lots of students work to supplement their grants, however if your daughter is applying to do BTS's she ought to apply for a bourse at the same time - it doesn't get paid until October at the earliest and you have to supply a certificate de scolarite so it won't do any harm if she decides she isn't going to school after all.

[quote user="5-element"]The last I overheard on the subject, was from a rather posh French lady (she runs a big branch of Secours Catholique in my area) talking about her nephew. He fully trained as an engineer and qualified rather brilliantly, but could not find work and is now....packing carrots.[/quote] Yes, I also know someone like that except that he went to a grande ecole and studied a much in demand type of science - (all this from his mother incidentally).  And the reason he is currently working as a cabinet maker in the black?  Not because of lack of job offers but because he flatly refuses to move from Bordeaux and there have never been any jobs of the type he trained for in this region. A straw poll amongst my children (aged 19, 21 & 24) suggests that every one of their friends whoisn't currently in education and wants to work has a job, albeit not always a perfect one.  All their friends who've done BTS's have  found work too which should encourage those of you who have kids doing BTS's. As far as the young French girl who claimed you had to do a training course to be a waitress I must respectfully say Rubbish!  There's plenty of work out there, especially in the larger cities, and according to my eldest daughter who supplements her bourse by waitressing conditions in French restaurants are better and the staff are also better paid than restuarants in Scotland (where she worked this summer).

Darty, Boulanger, But.... you name it they all have them.  Log onto their website and click on "cuisinieres grande largeur".  All gas cookers seem to have converters for gas bottles (say you'll be using propane).  Any reason why you specifically want all gas?  All the really superior cooks I know have dual gas & electric cookers, say it's the best of both worlds. 

One of my daughters had a room in Cité V, one of the older, unrefurbished students buildings.  It was small but very cheap.  However there is a serious problem with gypsies around the campus, they camp for weeks on end around the residences which aren't in walled compounds and the police seem to be powerless to move them on quickly.  There  were numerous ireports of burglaries of the rooms on the lower floor. My daughter always chose a room on the top floor, it kept her fit having to climb the stairs, was quieter and by and large thieves couldn't be bothered to climb up to the fourth floor - certainly in the two years she was there her floor was burglary free.

Like Lucinda I strongly doubt that if her parents are on minimum wages the student is getting no bourse at all.  Bourses are actually quite generous and though it's said that the full bourse is only payable to those who earn a very low wage there are masses of allowances and factors to set against your income before they start working it out.  I know Paris is a particular problem because of the cost of accomodation but Laura D would at the very least be getting aid from the state towards the cost of her rent (2 of mine in student accomodation get 60 euros a month towards rent of 120 euros a month, the third who is in a studio flat gets 150 euros towards a rent of 350 euros.)  Outside Paris student life isn't terribly expensive, my eldest is fine on her bourse of 2600 euros plus 40 euros a weekend from working Sunday mornings in the local market - the only help we give her is paying her rent.  All her friends have part time jobs and don't seem to have any difficulty in finding them. The costings quoted for the price of student life seemed to be pretty strange too, apart from the fact that my daughters wouldn't dream of drinking beer, it's coke or wine, they pay 4 euros a year towards the cost of their tuition, a reduced rate because they're boursiers true, but the full rate is I believe something around 120 euros - not the £1300 quoted in that article.