Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Places’ Category

Schooling in France starts from age 2 or 3 (depending on the local area) with education being compulsory from age 6 to 16.

Schools generally run Monday to Friday but on Wednesday some close or only operate in the morning and in some areas schools operate on Saturday morning. The hours are generally 9am to noon, 2pm to 5pm at all ages although the 2 and 3 year olds often only go in the mornings.

There is no “supply teacher” arrangement in France so if a teacher is off sick you will frequently get a phone call to come and collect your children.

From age 2 or 3 up to 6 you can enrol your children in nursery school (ecole maternelle) although this is not compulsory. This is more of a schooling environment than the equivalent in the UK and aims to prepare the children for entry to the next level of schooling.

For enrollment you will need to bring along ID for the child (passport or full birth certificate is equivalent to the “livret de famille” that they will ask for), proof of address (sometimes), proof that the child is insured (about EUR 10 per year) and, if the school is not in your commun, a letter from the mayor. In some cases you may be asked for proof of vaccinations. Even if your children speak no French you should have no difficulty in enrolling them in the local school at this level.

The age used is based on the calendar year so in the year in which your child is 6 they start primary school (ecole primaire) in September. The documentation required is as for the nursery school and if you want to go to a school outside your area then you’ll need a letter from your mayor too. There is usually no difficulty in getting non-French speaking children into primary school.

The secondary and high schools (college and lycee) are not tied to the local comun and operate over a wider region. Consequently you don’t need a letter from the mayor if you are going to a school out of your area. Other documentation remains the same with the additional requirement of a report from the primary school or alternatively your child will have to sit a test (UK school reports usually aren’t accepted).

For the college (age 11 to 16) you may be limited to the college in your local area as others can sometimes refuse to accept non-French speakers. Generally speaking, you shouldn’t have a problem if your child has previously attended primary school in France (ie they can speak French).

At age 17 pupils enter the lycee. These come in three varieties: general, management and technical which roughly correspond to UK high schools, business schools and technical colleges. This is the point at which children need to choose subjects though pupils in the French system study a much wider of subjects than they would at A level in the UK. As at entry to college, a report from the previous French school will help.

If your child does not speak French at this point, you may find that they need to attend a different school. What happens seems to vary widely across France with most areas accepting non-French speaking children at both college and lycee level whilst others refuse to do so at lycee level (see our post here).

It mightn’t look too impressive but this little laundry sign marks the point when last Thursday we officially became part of the route of the laundry lorry.

So, no longer do we need to spend about 90 minutes two or three times a week over the Summer just to drop off and collect our laundry and instead get it picked up and dropped off by the lorry. How come it’s taken three years to reach this point? Well, up to now they’ve claimed that the truck was full with all the laundry from the hotels from Carcassonne (we’re on the Carcassonne circuit) although they’ve been collecting stuff from a place about 15 minutes from us for over a year now.

Actually, we miss our little runs, at least the Winter ones, but certainly not the three times a week trips that we ended up doing last Summer.

As usual on the first weekend of August, the traffic has been heavy here since shortly after breakfast and it’ll likely stay that way until early tomorrow morning.

How come?

Well, it’s the start of the holiday season in France and a number of other European countries so everyone has jumped in their car this morning and started driving. As you’d expect, by the time they get to the south of France they’re both tired and cranky (a bad combination for a driver, of course) and therefore the number of traffic accidents also leaps this weekend.

It’s best not to attempt to drive anywhere on this particular weekend. Just about every road has traffic way above the capacity which it was designed for and the queues are correspondingly long and wearisome. The queue on the left of the photo is created by having three lanes of traffic at 130km/hr going down to two lanes at 10km/hr at the border which has the overall effect that the queue gets longer and longer as the day goes on (at the time of the photo in the late afternoon, the queue was getting on for 50km!).

You might be thinking that you can avoid the traffic by going on the side-roads. Think again: everyone has already thought of that and the side roads are just as busy. Those using in-car navigation aids will find that the queues on the recommended routes are even worse as a lot of people are using those these days and, of course, they always recommend the same route.

Carrickfergus is on the coast just 20 minutes or so north of Belfast so it’s easy to get to.

The castle is, of course, the main attraction of the town. Whilst it’s open all year with exhibitions depicting the history from the 1100s, it’s best to catch it during one of the Summer celebrations that are held. Allow about an hour to fully cover all the permanent exhibitions.

Strangely enough for such a major construction, much of its history isn’t known to great precision so you’ll find that the outer ward was probably added between 1228 and 1242 rather than having an exact date. In fact the only exact date quoted is that of the landing of King William the third on June 14th 1690 which is commemorated by a small plaque at the end of the pier which you can see in this photograph and also by his statue outside the castle.

Sadly the castle fell into disrepair after this time though it was still being used as a fortress when it was captured for the last time in 1760 by the French. After that it was used as a prison and then an armoury up until 1928 and later as an air-raid shelter in the second world war. As a consequence of this long period of non-castle use, numerous repairs were made after it was handed over as a musuem, some of which were a little overdone giving it an overall artificial feel.

This is part of our series of articles for Northern Ireland Themes.

You may have seen some debate about whether a UK driving license remains legal when you’re actually living overseas.

Mine recently came up for renewal and I thought I’d have to change it for a French one. However, when I read the small print as to how they decide if you’re UK resident or not it turns out that, according to their own definition, I am actually legally UK resident despite having lived in France for three years!

That’s one of the odd things about living here. Even after living here for three years, it is still easier for me to prove that I live in the UK than that I live in France.