Moving a Child to France in GCSE Years/Just Afterwards

[Pixietoadstool]

Hello there everyone!

I have already posted this on another forum - but the more replies the merrier, as far as I am concerned!

After having a holiday home in Normandie (Manche) for more than 6 years now I/we have been toying with the idea of moving to France for a variety of reasons. My son and I have spent all the school holidays at our house for most of those years with my husband joining us for a few weeks at a time. We also feel we have reached the stage when we realise that the grass is not always greener on the other side but various situations here in the UK look like they may push us to move to France earlier than we had anticipated.

My son is just about to start his GCSE course and is due to take these exams in 2 years. Really what I am trying to do is gauge what sorts of obstacles he would have to overcome in order to make a successful transition between here and there.

On the positive side, my son has wanted to move to France for the last 5 years and would jump at the chance. He also manages to communicate with the local farmer's family pretty well although I have to say that his understanding of French (particularly the grammar) is not very good at all (even though his French teacher in the UK describes him as gifted - I think she is flattering him!). He is bright but probably not going to be an academic - I can't see him working in an office. The only career he can envisage at the moment that doesn't involve hard landscaping/farming/digging holes is the law and of course if he were to choose this route I would imagine he might have problems achieving good enough grades in a French school to be admitted to law school in France.

Does anyone else here have experience of moving a child to France in their GCSE years or just afterwards?

What exams do French children take after the equivalent of their GCSEs?

Would he be able to fit in with the system or would he be held back for a year or two in order to get up to speed on various subjects?

What chance is there of him doing well in local Normandie schools?

These are my main questions for starters but I should be very interested to have any comments or learn of your experiences.

Thanks in anticipation of your help anyone!

Valerie

[Tresco]

Hi Pix, just bumping your topic up to the top really.

Sorry I have no experience with children here. The only thing I would say is that I'm sure teachers don't fling the term 'gifted' around willy nilly.

As I have 'met' your son in cyberspace - though I didn't know he was your son at the time - I would say he's a very bright spark indeed. [:D]

 

[Pixietoadstool]

Hi there Tresco!!  Errh ... ohhh...  you remember him - I was hoping perhaps people had forgotten that rather embarrassing time!!![:$]

Yes he is a bright spark ... but a bit lazy like his mother!!  [blink]

Thanks for bumping up the post - I am looking forward to getting a variety of experiences from people so that I have a bit more of an idea of how to plan for the future!

Valerie [:)]

[Val_2]

I've got to be brutally honest and say I think your son will have a very hard time indeed. He will be only a couple of years away from choosing a Lycée for a chosen career path and it just gets harder and harder the older they get. There are those who will say their kids jumped in and did wonderfully,maybe they did,but for a non-speaking and non-french grammar educated english child to start at this age is going to be very very hard indeed. All the years of primaire and collège cannot be caught up with in just a couple of re-doubling years and the brevêt exam soon arrives,the result of which could affect the next stage of education. I am speaking from having two children go through eleven years of french education and they are still continuing to go for more qualifications and it dosn't get any easier. Please think very carefully about this as my son had an english girl turn up at the Lycée recently with not one word of french and she had been living here for three years already and the teachers and the head had no idea of what to do with her educationally,the family eventually returned to the UK this year. Maybe your child could study french in the UK to A-level and then try a french Lycée but,whatever you do,think about the future and not the present. Sorry to have upset the applecart.

[SaligoBay]

[quote user="Tresco"]

The only thing I would say is that I'm sure teachers don't fling the term 'gifted' around willy nilly.

[/quote]

If his "gifted" status is important to you/him, you might be as well looking around in Britain, because the education system seems to be more open to differences.    My son is also regarded as "gifted", age 11 when most of his class are 13, and finding the work easy.   His prof principale said last year he needs something different, but Gallic shrug, there's nothing round here. 

So any giftedness he may or may not have has had to go by the wayside.  The school days are long and tiring enough without adding anything else academic on!

Did you notice the three versions of the verb "have" in that last paragraph?  Have has had.  Neat, huh?  [:D]

[Russethouse]

Would you  like a comma ? [:)]

Thanks for pointing that out Tresco....[:)]

[Viv]

Sorry can't help myself.... I am twitching and I should get a life but isn't it "have had has "?

I am trying soooo hard not to press the post button

edit - failed , I'm off to get drunk!

[Tresco]

[quote user="Russethouse"]Would like a comma ? [:)][/quote]

Would you like a 'you' Gay? [:-))]

[Tresco]

[quote user="Pixietoadstool"]

Hi there Tresco!!  Errh ... ohhh...  you remember him - I was hoping perhaps people had forgotten that rather embarrassing time!!![:$][/quote]

Hi Pix. Sorry for getting involved in that derailment .

There wasn't anything to be embarrassed about. I was very surprised to find out he was in fact a child, that was all. [:)]

[Wendy]

Hi Pixie!

Id say...don't do it. Leave him where he is unless he is very confident about meeting what will be a very challenging time. And also if he's 16 and his French is not up to standard the schools tend to slam the door in your face. It happened to us. My 13 year old has finally settled in after nearly 2 years but I wish we'd considered my older son's situation. He's ok now but I'd change a few things if I could go back a couple of years. He really hated this place for a long time, now he is just starting to tolerate it. But there's no alternative for us, he has to remain here for a while. Like I said, discuss it with your son.

[Catalpa]

If Pixie discusses it with her son... they'll be on this evening's ferry.

 

[Catalpa]

[quote user="Pixietoadstool"]Hi there Tresco!!  Errh ... ohhh...  you remember him - I was hoping perhaps people had forgotten that rather embarrassing time!!![:$][/quote]

She probably had... till a "friend" mentioned the episode privately, in passing. [:$][:$][:$]

[Kitty]

I have a 15 year old moving into a French school in September (I have three other younger children but they are not relevant to your query).  She has a French GCSE already because she lived in France for 6 months when she was younger so she knows some language already (but mainly spoken and not written French).  She had an expermental trial at a school for three months and got on really well.  Her self esteem escalated (French children wanted to know her - esp in English lessons) and she said that she understood everything.  The school was pleased with her, despite her language skills being poor.

I would recommend a 3 month (or a longer period of time) trial.  We rented a house (long term rents are cheaper in the winter) and sent all the children to schools for a whole term.  It was so successful that we decided to 'go for it'.

Our 15 year old has chosen an ecole professionnel as she wants to be a chef. Ecoles prof are for post 15 year olds and are very good for technical subjects.  Her school specialises in hotel & catering, with an onsite restaurant for the public that the students cook for, but there are many others specialising in a range of technical subjects.

If my eldest had been academic, I do not know whether I would have started her in France, even with the level of language that she has, at this age.  The bacc is recognised as a difficult qualification to obtain, hence its international standing.  Others who are further into the system may be able to help.

Good luck...

[HLG]

Hi SaligoBay,

Depending on how your son feels, you may want to investigate the "college de la maronne" in Saint Martin de Valmeyroux, Cantal. Downside: it's a boarding school, so your son would be at school 5 days a week (and I have no idea how easy the train ride is from Cantal to your area.) Upside: it's a public boarding school designed for children with a curious mind and whom the traditional system can't handle (or whose parents feel the traditional system is stiffling them). Children have individualized study plans and lots of interdisciplinary workshops - especially well-suited for children who learn differently, whether they are gifted or not. (The gifted kids are not in a special section but mixed in with everybody else.) There are no "classes" in that pupils are grouped depending on interests or according to their level. They do prepare the Brevet like all other French pupils. The school only has about 60 students, 30 of whom are "internes". I don't know what children have to do to apply, probably a motivation letter explaining why they're unhappy with their current school and why they'd learn better in the environment provided by the "college de la maronne".

 

[HLG]

Hi Pixie,

Depending on how eager your son is, it could be a nightmare or merely challenging.

French children take a test called "brevet" which, in my humble opinion, is pretty stupid, in that anyone with passing marks is certain to have it whereas teenagers with all-around low-marks have no chance. It doesn't affect your getting to the lycee, since passing it is too low to predict success at an academic lycee while failing it means the pupil is pretty much failing everything, which all knew. This may change with the "new Brevet" but here I'll refer to those out there who teach in "collège". It's taken around age 14-15 (16 in case of repeated years.) The Brevet, as of now, includes marks from Quatrieme and Troisieme (last two years of lower secondary), plus a test including: French (short dictation; reading comprehension of a page-long moderately literary text; composition: writing a few paragraphs on a given topic which may be based on the reading comprehension such as 'write what happens next'; grammatical analysis - recognize the subject, why is the present tense used there, etc ); math (geometry, basic trig, algebra); history/geography/civics (mostly 20th century history-WWI, Soviet Revolution, Krach of 1929, Front Populaire, New Deal,  WWII, decolonization, September 11...-  and European geography.)

After Troisieme, pupils can start a professional course (BEP, Bac Pro) but they've got to choose their track carefully: some are much sought-after, such as cooking, watch-making, musical-instrument-making, etc..., some virtually garantee a job offer after diploma - such as bakery, plumbing, etc- and some are dead-end tracks where all the most 'unteachable' youth are lumped.

Some pupils can start a "Professional discovery" Troisieme or even Quatrieme but, to be brutally honest, kids sent to these classes tend to be the ones teachers can't handle and are "desperate cases". I hope I won't shock parents out there by saying this. :-0

A nice option open to 16 year olds is l'apprentissage - apprenticeship. You can go all the way to a professional university degree with this, as long as you choose your path wisely. The pupils have about 13-15 weeks of class and only 5 weeks of (paid) holidays, the rest of the time being on-the-job training. They receive a modest stipend for it and take exams every other year on "general knowledge" (French, English, math, history/geography/civics, health...) and "professional knowledge".

From what you're saying, your son would be very keen on attending a French school. Perhaps, as someone suggested, you may enroll him for a term in a "quatrieme" near your holiday home and see how it goes. (Quatrieme is when more abstract concepts are introduced but has no exams - unlike Troisieme, which has the brevet.) Problem: there are only 2 weeks of classes left (barely).. don't know if you could arrange it... If you can wait for next year (Winter term perhaps?) it may be easier but then he may be too old for Quatrieme (most children will be 14, some 15, some even 13.)  If he's still enthusiastic, he could enter Troisieme in the following term and decide on whether he's interested in an apprenticeship, a professional school, or an academic career path after that. The end of Troisieme is the first time pupils can choose whether to leave the academic track for apprenticeships or professional tracks (such as BEP.) The year that follows Troisieme, Seconde, is still fairly general, but at the end it's a guillotine-like decision: whatever you qualify for (or don't) is pretty much irreversible. It's unheard-of to go from a BEP to a Premiere S to become a doctor, for example.

 

 

[Mistral]

[quote user="HLG"]Some pupils can start a "Professional discovery" Troisieme or even Quatrieme but, to be brutally honest, kids sent to these classes tend to be the ones teachers can't handle and are "desperate cases". I hope I won't shock parents out there by saying this. :-[/quote]

No, I'm not shocked as a parent, but as a teacher. DP3 and DP6 have only existed for a couple of years. The DP3 option is for kids who stay in the same 3eme classes, in the same collèges with the same curriciculum and the same same teachers as a standard 3eme option. So it certainly wouldn't be a way of getting rid of a pupil we couldn't handle. Maybe you were only talking about DP6, which are in LEP's. If I think back to the pupils we suggested for DP6 this year, I see a group of kids who want to get into the "voie professionel" fast and who want to have the DP6 bonus for BEP next year and leave the over-structured (their opinion) collège system. We didn't even bother suggesting it for the "desperate cases" as (1) they would never have had a sufficient dossier  and (2) if their dossier had been OK, they would have taken the place of a pupil who really wanted to go there. Anyway, if the pupil or the parents don't want to go to these classes there is nothing we can do or say. After all that there is a commission which looks at motviation (and not just the pupil's) and who decides who can or can't go. I have a pupil in tears at the moment because her candidature has been refused. She's a charming child and a pleasure to have in class and I have no problems with the idea of having her for another year, it just seems a pity, she can't do what she wants.

I'm not saying that no collège uses the "early pro" possibilities as a way of getting rid of certain pupils. (I'm not that naive) I've taught in both 4eme techno and 3eme insertion (in  collèges) Usually, when the class opens, all the teachers (those who won't be having it the following year) try to use it as a "dumping ground" but by the second year, they realise that it makes the class unmanageable and take more care.

[HLG]

Mistral: Apologies for going from factual to derogatory.

Yes I was speaking of the DP6. It's not so much 'getting rid of' as... trying something else, hoping it'll work, because it seems everything else has been tried already and the pupils are spiraling down, taking everyone down along with them.

I won't name the LP then, but the criteria there are essentially: kids who are 15 and have been in an atelier-relais or a classe-relais already but can'treturn to their regular collège. Are also admitted kids who were already in their "4e" -- and the pupils in that "quatrième" (there was only one for the collège-catchment area) I am sorry to say, WERE children who were noxious to their classmates (and themselves), so had been sent there in the hope the new setting would help them. What I take from your post is that the situation depends on the particular school and its policies. It probably also depends on how "bad" the situation is overall.

The classe-relais I know is probably worse than average but my notion of "dumping ground" stemmed from the "special quatrième" recruitment plus the fact that LP's DP6 was seen as the class for the "classe-relais" kids who had *not* been admitted into a CAP/BEP program or had not been accepted back into their original school but were not 16 yet. (The class in question was comprised of 7 teens, including two boys who were notorious drug dealers and enjoyed showing off how they paid their "pain au chocolat" - 50 centimes- with large currency bills, one girl who, it turned out, was forced to prostitute herself by her boyfriend, and another girl who could be charming or violent depending on the day and would have needed counseling as she was probably bipolar but it wasn't available because she wasn't a bad-enough case. Other than that they were all pleasant enough teens and while I can see how they would have driven their teachers mad in a large group, they weren't "savages" as some media would have it. Their families were alsoutterly overwhelmed plus two which were, in my opinion, in and by themselves "toxic". The young dealers' families were also, alas, dependent on their money, which would limit parental legitimacy...)

 

[Mistral]

Sounds horrifying. I can (sort of) understand the logic behind it all. These pupils probably no longer wanted /needed to be in collège and would welcome the possibility to go on to something a bit different. But sticking them all together in one class probably isn't going to help the situation much. It does sound very "classe poubelle" to me. And this adds the problem of what to do with other pupils who don't have this sort of problem and who really want to go to DP6. As a PP I would have enormous difficulty advising them  to go somewhere like that. But we have a possibility of three DP6's and two 3eme I's in our immediate area so I have more scope.

What you describe doesn't really fulfil the criteria of a DP6, there are supposed to be lettres de motivation, commissions etc. It's supposed to be based on the kids wanting to go and not the teachers wanting them to leave. I know there are schools that do this. We deliberately didn't suggest DP6 or 3I to certain kids as we know they could wreck a class and would find it easier with a class of already fragile children. We kept them in 3eme G (with an adapted timetable for certain, meaning they have a lot of stages or they have 2 half days a week at the centre social to work on their projet professionnel). I appreciate this having worked in schools who did the opposite.

It's always the same frustration. As you say, it's trying something new because nothing else has worked yet. But at the same time I'm always frustrated by the lack of help for these kids. You end up with one assistant social 2 days a week when you would need full time people. I won't go on to my feelings about the conseilleurs d'oreintation -psychologues. I want to remain polite [:)]

[Fil]

Hi,

I read your question and thought I would tell you about my boys.  We moved in May 2002 with two boys aged 13 and 16.  Charlie had just done his GCSE's and got ten good grades, including french, and tried french school.  French GCSE is NO preparation for french school, even one claiming to teach partly in english, which his did.  The french was taught at top speed and the english very slowly for the french kids!  The teachers hated repeating things and he rapidly became depressed and disillusioned.  We took him away after two terms and he went back to the UK the following year.

James was 13 and a half, at the end of his second year in school in the UK, and went into 5eme here, then moved up to 4eme with his new friends.  He had to redouble 4eme, then did 3eme, his Brevet, and has just finished his first year at Lycée Generale.  However, he is a very bright boy (genius level IQ of 145, measured here in France) and he is well aware of his options both here and in the UK.  He wants to be a Computer Animator and work in films, has set his sights on several UK universities and film schools, and knows he needs a good art education to follow the courses he wants.  The art education here is appalling and seems almost impossible to do combined with a Science Bac which is what he also would need.  The A levels required for his career are one scientific one, one art one and one other by the way.  So, even though he has passed Seconde and is going up to Première (something not all french pupils do) he is going back to live in the UK with his brother and do A levels at my old school (a very good one).  He is doing Maths, Physics, Art and French.

In my experience the french education system is rigorous, old fashioned (not a bad thing sometimes at all), a bit narrow minded, dictatorial, and could do with a spot of updating.  I am not disillusioned by it, and I am sure it suits alot of people, but if you have a child who is a bit out of the ordinary, in any way at all (dyslexic for example) it cannot cope well.  We have a five year old too, just about to go into CP, and I will decide when the time comes whether he should continue into College, or Lycée, depending on how he turns out.  He too is extremely intelligent, but will have had the benefit of a complete french education behind him.  James has always found the french grammar quite hard, and german too (not a linguist, but fluent in french nevertheless), and whereas in the UK you can drop subjects you are not so good at, here you just have to soldier on.

I would suggest that your son is probably on the verge of too old to move.  James was right there on the edge, but his brains, his determination (he has Aspergers syndrome which makes him both super intelligent and fixed on what he wants to do) and his personality have helped him through.  If we had waited for Charlie to finish in the UK school, James would have been too old, if we had waited for James, we would still be in the UK now.  So we took the plunge and I will never know if we have done Charlie a big wrong. 

Think very hard indeed before you do the same thing to your son.  I feel (sexist thing here) that girls transfer better, due to their gossipy natures, need to communicate etc.  I certainly have had less opportunity than the boys, but have transferred very well.  I had done O level french, a bit with a native french lady in Wales, and then I just set to and talked!  After nearly four years I did six months formation with AFPA (paid - wonderful!) and ended up on the courses just for french speakers, for which I got mostly 15 - 18 out of 20.  I think I must have been their star pupil.  But I am a natural gossip, and now my french is very good indeed.  And all learnt as an oldie.  But I was very very motivated indeed.

Think hard.  If you want to PM me for any further advice, please do. 

Fil