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Moving to Limousin


Andrea
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I wonder if anyone can give us a rough idea of what the top ten schools are in France and if any show up in the Limousin area. We are in the very early stages of looking into moving over to France and one of the areas we are interested in is the Limousin.

If anyone can give us any advice, this would help us enormously. We are going to be visiting the area in the summertime, so if anyone can give us any other ideas and tips on this area, we would be really grateful.

 

Thanks for your help.[:)]

A

 

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Do you mean primary schools, collèges, or lycées?  There aren't league tables here as there are in the UK.  If it is lycées you are after the weekly magazine le Nouvel Observateur has just published their own very comprehensive league tables for lycées, have a look on their website.  Generally, the schools with the best reputation are those found in large cities, Henri IV in Paris for example, and not in the Limosin.

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Hi, thanks for your response. Our little girl is only 3 at the moment, so we have plenty of time to choose the big schools. However, the choice when she gets bigger however, is going to be more difficult. I would like to send her to a school with a good reputation but because there is no league tables, I think it will be a case of finding out that info when I get there.

What are the pre-schools like in the limousin? Do you think it would be better to send her to a french school or an English school that teaches French for the first part?

Any help you can give in this area would be great.

Thanks

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Andrea,

It is hard to answer your questions without knowing more information, but hope this helps.

In our department (and I believe this is the case throughout France) there are no 'pre-schools' as such. Our son started at our local maternelle just before his 3rd birthday. There are two classrooms in this school, spanning 4 school years (3-4 yrs and 5-6 yrs). In a large town I imagine the schools will be bigger, with more classrooms, spanning all the 'primary school' years, ie up to 10 yrs.

No one is going to be able to tell you what 'schools are like' in a given area - like in the UK, standards vary dramatically. Who would ask for the general standard of preschools in, say, Birmingham, or London? It's impossible to say. I suggest that when you have chosen where you want to live, visit all the schools in your area and go with the one you like best. You know your child and what she responds well to so you are the best people to choose. Personally I would never move somewhere just because there is a so-called 'good' school there, but that is my choice. Where we live there isn't a choice - it is small and our village and two others group together with one school in each for all of the children, covering all primary school levels. I guess in a big town you will get the choice, though, so make the most of it and visit them all.

Whether you want to send your daughter to a french school or not depends entirely on your circumstances. If when you move she is already in the UK system and you do not intend to stay in France permanently then perhaps a school that follows the UK structure would be a good idea. Don't know how many of those there are, though. If you plan to stay and your daughter is still pretty young, my advice would be to send her to a french school, and if possible a local one - surely she will integrate better if she knows all the local kids and takes part in local activities? This could help her loads, especially if you speak english at home, like we do. Summer holidays are long and if she doesn't speak much french when not at school it can be hard to get back into it, not to mention confusing for little ones!

Good luck with your research, and I hope you find somewhere you like this summer.

Jane

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I would also give a thought to the traveling time to schools while you are looking for a home. Limousin is big and some areas are sparsely populated so the journey time can be long. We are only 20 mins from Brive and Uzerche but the school bus goes past our house around 5:30 in the afternoon. Heaven knows what time the children get home in the back of beyond.
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I live in the south of Indre and am about 40 minutes away from central Limoges.  My son started maternelle in November and he was 27 months, he only goes twice a week for the morning but he loves it already.  He's the youngest but the school has two age groups in the same class although they get slightly different work although the same *project* I.E this term is Animals and they are planning a trip to the circus when it comes to Limoges.  This is a rural school with only 17 kids so it's alot different from i.e a maternelle in Limoges which I can imagine to be very big and big classes.  But please remember maternelle isn't like playgroup, I find it to be very structured and they definitely have *lessons*.

With regard to league tables, does it really matter if the school isn't in the top 10 ??? surely it's whether your children are happy, learning, being challenged and living a good life.  It always irritated me in the UK about league tables, my school wasn't in the top 10 in the uk yet I didn't do too badly, it's more attitude from teachers and kids than a figure in a table. 

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And I thought that all kids are supposed to go to their nearest school anyway - choice UK style doesn't come into it. That's what I liked when we came to France 15 years ago - no messing, straight into local schools. The only "mutations" allowed are for schools elsewhere with different options not available locally.

Choice is available only for state vs private (where TU is correct - it's not the content that is different, but possibly lower class numbers and better discipline)

Rose
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  • 2 weeks later...
Top ten schools - you couldn't make it up!

If you want to send your kids to one of the 'top ten' schools in the country why not stay in the UK and pay the required fees

To the average French family there is no notion of the top schools - certainly at a primary and secondary level. You send your child to the local village/town school and then they progress to the local town college. If you are religious or perhaps english and in no way religious then you pay a few euros per month and have your children educated by the local village/town private Catholic school presumably for the kudos of saying that your children are privately educated in France (perhaps in one of the top ten schools for good measure). I'd say that the standard of education across most schools is broadly the same.

It really annoys me when I see UK families trying to import the kind of education eliteism that has plagued the UK in recent years. It has no place in France as it would surely cause the same damage to the excellent French education system as has been caused to the UK system over the last 20 years.

Rant over (for the moment).

 

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[quote user="hoverfrog"]it's not always automatic that kids go to the local school - sometimes if the parents work out of the immediate area then they send the kids to a school nearer the workplace.[/quote]

They would have to have a derogation to do that, or send their kids to an ecole privé.

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[quote user="bloodyestateagent"]Top ten schools - you couldn't make it up!

If you want to send your kids to one of the 'top ten' schools in the country why not stay in the UK and pay the required fees

To the average French family there is no notion of the top schools - certainly at a primary and secondary level. You send your child to the local village/town school and then they progress to the local town college. If you are religious or perhaps english and in no way religious then you pay a few euros per month and have your children educated by the local village/town private Catholic school presumably for the kudos of saying that your children are privately educated in France (perhaps in one of the top ten schools for good measure). I'd say that the standard of education across most schools is broadly the same.

It really annoys me when I see UK families trying to import the kind of education eliteism that has plagued the UK in recent years. It has no place in France as it would surely cause the same damage to the excellent French education system as has been caused to the UK system over the last 20 years.

Rant over (for the moment).
 
[/quote]

 

Excellent education system........ what an elitist thing the french education system is. Excellent, well for the top 20% I agree, for the rest and I don't know where to start. It needs such a shake up and the moeurs need so radically changing, I have no idea as to where they could start. Importing something, well, yes, it wouldn't do any harm at all, if it imported quite a lot actually.

Rant over, for now also.

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French education is a lottery, basically you get what you are given and have to put up with it regardless. You do not complain here,teachers are fonctionnaires and band together and end up picking on the pupil in question. Newbies should listen to those of us with kids already in french education and not bring in their own ideas of how the french should run their state schools.

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[quote user="Teamedup"]

[quote user="hoverfrog"]it's not always automatic that kids go to the local school - sometimes if the parents work out of the immediate area then they send the kids to a school nearer the workplace.[/quote]

They would have to have a derogation to do that, or send their kids to an ecole privé.

[/quote]

round here they just go to the mairie and register them, same as for registering to the local school!

We lose some kids but gain others according to M. the maire.
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This should be done with a formal request, or go to a private school.

 

IF your Mairie is taking such an attitude about this, I am wondering how this will affect keeping your class open. Strange old goings on, this laisser faire attitude for a place with the risk of a class closure.

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Sorry to interject, but Hoverfrog,[:)]

We seem to have a problem. When you select to 'quote' a members post, we see this.

<BLOCKQUOTE><table width="85%"><tr><td class="txt4"><img src="/cs/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif">&nbsp;<strong>Teamedup wrote:</strong></td></tr><tr><td class="quoteTable"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="100%" valign="top" class="txt4"><P><BLOCKQUOTE><table width="85%"><tr><td class="txt4"><img src="/cs/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif">&nbsp;<strong>hoverfrog wrote:</strong></td></tr><tr><td class="quoteTable"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="100%" valign="top" class="txt4">it's not always automatic that kids go to the local school - sometimes if the parents work out of the immediate area then they send the kids to a school nearer the workplace.</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE></P>

Is that what you can see? I know other members have had this dificulty, and resolved it by cutting and pasting, to start with.

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I have no idea how formally they have to ask at the mairie, I just know it's where they have to ask! The maire didn't seem overly concerned though as they gain as many as they lose.

Like many politicians he uses information to his advantage in whatever circumstance! For example when he didn't want to build a new école maternelle he said that he couldn't rely on the numbers of children in the canton because some would be scholarisé out of the area, but when it comes to saving the primary he says the new maternelle is on its way and that with the numbers rising we can't afford to lose a class!

It seems strange that for a rural zone with lots of incentives for new families and businesses to set up here that they are undermining the effort by destroying the infrastructure. Left hand not seeing what right hand is doing syndrome :)

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We seem to have a problem. When you select to 'quote' a members post, we see this...

this is what happens when I try to use the quote 'facility'.

This is most likely because I use Safari on the Mac as my default browser, which doesn't seem to like whatever the forums do with HTML :(

It looks normal until posted - same with embedding links.

Sometimes life is just too short to have to fire up another browser and find the right page, etc, etc, - I usually try to get round it by not quoting!
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Hi Hoverfrog.

I never knew it looked normal to those of you with this problem, so thanks for that.

'Sometimes life is just too short to have to fire up another browser and find the right page, etc, etc, - I usually try to get round it by not quoting...'

I think you're better off cutting and pasting the quotes. Quotes are good! Deranged Computer Generated Gobbledygook is bad.[kiss][:D]

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Where school is concerned we can't just pick and chose. We have a catchment areas.We are supposed to write and ask and sometimes the inspecteur gets involved too. Your Maire is doing any old thing and no one is saying that he shouldn't and  so he continues. I am sure that the Inspecteur, the person who will have quite a say in making the decision about the closure will be more than aware of what is going on.

As you say, lots of politics but I don't blame him for not building a new school. That never seems to have any influence at all over class closures and they cost communes lots of money.

As far as the class closure is concerned, good luck, but they seem to be playing strange games where you live.

 

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Teamedup wrote:

"Where school is concerned we can't just pick and chose. We have a catchment areas.We are supposed to write and ask and sometimes the inspecteur gets involved too. Your Maire is doing any old thing and no one is saying that he shouldn't and so he continues. I am sure that the Inspecteur, the person who will have quite a say in making the decision about the closure will be more than aware of what is going on.

As you say, lots of politics but I don't blame him for not building a new school. That never seems to have any influence at all over class closures and they cost communes lots of money.

As far as the class closure is concerned, good luck, but they seem to be playing strange games where you live."

We all have catchment areas, but where there are rules there are also other rules that enable people to circumnavigate the rules. Whether you have to put your request in writing to the mairie or not I don't know personally, but as it's France I suspect it's in writing and intriplicate :)

I don't think the maire is doing "any old thing" at all - there appears to be a genuine and accepted argument for people to put their kids in school outside their canton if they work elsewhere and consequently getting them there / picking them up would be problematical if the kids went to the local school. Call it a get-out clause or whatever, it exists and people use it.

In an area such as this (rural Limousin) this is a big problem as jobs tend to be quite a way away, often as far as Limoges.

The inspecteur has no interest in the local area - he is trying to make his books balance. When pushed all he can talk about is how it was when he was in Corsica! The prefet is due to be replaced next month so also has no interest, and the Rector(sp?) likewise.

Neuvic built a new primary school three years ago, which indeed did cost the commune lots of money. The fact that they believed in the growth of the area enough to invest such a sum has no bearing on the Inspecteur Academique.

The Inspecteur Academique said that he would try to do what he could... put our schools in for conditional closure only ... leave the decision till later... then turned round and presented the dossier anyway with recommended definitive closure.

So, now we are really "roulé dans la farine" as they say round here.

Rest of the week is "occupation des locaux" - and I'm making the coffee on friday!
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I know that when our friends moved to the Charente, they had just started middle school - Worcs. We have a 3-tier schooling system here. Anyway, the two girls are eighteen months apart but were put together as their French was basic!

They found the system a shock at first as the schooling was strict - blackboard erasers were still thrown by teachers, and they had to eat the food put in front of them - the food was different, but a three course meal every day, was good.

Although they were held back a year, this helped them, they are now more French than English - six years later. The elder is at college in Limoges, whilst the younger at Language college in Angouleme. Don't worry about the system, just get them into the nearest school to mix with their friends - hopefully local, and they will amaze you. Most of the British children I have met, now grown up, are part of the French culture and are far more educated than ours over here. I find their French friends are more mannered, as are the girls.They even took their moped tests in school to make sure they were capable!

I believe integration is important, if you are moving to France, they should be part of the local group. I know the school buses can be early and drop them off late, but the benefits are there for all to see - especially in the Charente/Limousin ares.

Enjoy it - and make sure they pass on their French homework to you!

 

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