Does anyone have a wheeze for getting our daughter out of compulsory English at college. I'd prefer (and she'd prefer) to progress her Chinese studies online during English class.
I thought perhaps there is maybe some English exam for 16yr olds she could take at age 11/12 and then break free
All suggestions welcome
Really? I too was told this for years, whilst my son was still in Primary school, and even asked English teachers at the 'collège' open day who also confirmed that, yes, he would have to do English at least as his second language and that, yes, he would be bored out of his mind, but hey, what could you do? The principal adjoint, when asked, confirmed that there is nothing in the Education National texts (Google it) but to keep it quiet! My son then told all his friends (French) and two others are also doing the German/ Spanish combo. Various parents have since told me that their children were told that it was an exception for my son as he is bilingual (French dad) but this is not the case.
I have been in France since 1992 and one thing that I have learnt, is that you need to go on and on and on to get the right answer to your question. Go high up and don't take no for an answer. If you want your children to do another language instead of English then ask them to show you where it is stated that English is compulsory in the Education Nationale Texts.......they'll soon back down!
In our local colleges it certainly is compulsory (for everyone except the native English speaker), and we'd been advised by practically everyone, parents and teachers, (wrongly as it happily turns out) that the difficulties in doing something different for one child would be insuperable.
It depends on which languages are offered at collège & then Lycée - there are however guidelines in most academies which state that one of the two compulsory foreign languages studied must be English.
The new Bac programmes put far more emphasis on spoken MFL and comprehension thereof - the Regional Secondary Inspector (English himself) told us on Wednesday that communication and, therefore, VOCABULARY is the priority, not necessarily faultless use of (eg) the present perfect tense...
We target European level B2 fpr a 2nd language, B1 for a 1st language and C2 for in-depth study of a modern language (ie the Ls) IF a person hits that target, they get 20. Some of my colleagues are beginning to realise that it is, in fact, as simple as that. Any educated native speaker who reads a decent amount in English and can write grammatically acceptable sentences expressing a bit of thought, should be getting 20.
Many pupils shoot themselves in the foot by not reading their set text, for example, or coming up with very superficial trite analyses of texts they are given. These are usually the same ones who think that being a native speaker of English is enough to get a good grade forgetting that they don't read and we aren't looking for very colloquial English in the context of an academic exam because it is inappropriate.
That said: too many, alas, of my colleagues still mark all of their pupils against some abstract notion of perfection which isn't what the exam is actually asking for, but the situation IS changing, God knows the Rectorats bang on about it enough. Last time a colleague from another Lycee said 'oh but these pupils have an unfair advantage, they should be marked harder' I pointed out that in that case we should be adding points onto every other subject since they were doing them in a foreign language..
My daughter (in S) got 20 in both her mod langs last summer for the Bac so clearly the message is getting through at last.
With reference to the question in the original post, you can't do bits of the Bac at different times, you can, however, do other internationally recognised certificated modern language tests eg TOEFL & TOEIC etc
What I don’t understand is the word ‘compulsory’. This is not the case in France. My eldest son chose German as his first language in 6e and when he was nearing the end of 5e I went to see the
Principal adjoint abouthis 2nd language options. His school offers German, English and Spanish as LV2. He told me that there is nothing in the texts about the need to do english at all, despite what many parents/ teachers say unoffically, and as long as it fits in the timetable there is no no issue. So, my son will be able to speak 4 languages, English, French, German and Spanish and hecan even choose English for his Bac oral if wanted. Younger son in 6e is doing German too.
I asked repeatedly for my son to have the same consideration at Collège Gerard Phillip Chauvigny, and was studiously ignored, though one teacher did give my son and other étrangers extra help with their french in her free time.
My son was used as a free educational assistant in lessons, helping the french sudents with their english or required to sit quietly, bored. When he had enough of this he became disuptive and was branded a trouble maker for the rest of his college schooling, whilst at the same time, being bullied mercilessly by a group of romany travellers who no doubt used the fact he was english as an excuse to take the heat off themselves.
My son hated school in rural france and subsequently gave up with it before he entered Prèmiére at lycee, even though he passed his brevée. His Principal was a bully and nothing I could do or say would illicit any co-operation on any issue from any of the staff other than one or two helpful sympathisers. I even joined the school as a parent member of the conseil de classe, to show willing, but this was also useless. I asked during one meeting, if they would allow a badly failing pupil to do a higher level of art classes, because it was clearly the only subject of any interest to her as she had the best marks of all her class in it and the lowest in all her other subjects. They just laughed at me, with the usual 'that's not how we do things in France, Madame'.
If I had hindsight, I would have sought out and sent my son to the most internationally biased school possible, even if it meant sending him away - boarders get grants here if you have a low income and a good reason ie.being foreign
and I certainly would not waste time arguing, just change schools if you get any trouble as arguing seems to make the situation worse.
Also not my point about ourselves, rather more that my wife and I work in the field of childhood and have academic knowledge of education and the teacher I mentioned is a language teacher here and whose ideas are in this thread, plus her own children who are bi- and tri-lingual are themselves also following the French curriculum. It is a circular argument as well. The many French children at present in the UK are not excluded from French in schools where it is taught for pragmatic reasons.
I would agree that the French education system is not very good compared to good but paid for schools in England. However, private education in France like England is very different and I would not say that one is better than the other. However, supposedly 'best' schools in both private and public sectors in most countries are measured by exam results and curiously at present, looking at UNESCO's figures for instance, France is improving whereas England (bearing in mind Scotland and Wales are now separate and have different curricula to England) is going down quite quickly.
It is quite subjective generally, my children went to an award winning school before we moved here. Where we are now does not 'shine' academically in my opinion. Moreover, one of our children has special needs and left primary school after an extra year there at least a year behind where she was when we moved to France. So your criticism has full respect as we see it. However, unless we intend to move to another country or back to the UK, long term goals must incorporate the curriculum on offer, thus the qualifications gained here.
My daughters are Swiss citizens as well as 'British' and were they to be educated in that country would be obliged to study all three (of four) national languages plus English. There would be no opt out because their first language is English and nobody opts out because they are French, German, Italian or Rumantsch first language speakers.
There is also a well proven problem in that the way grammar and syntax are taught vary between countries, indeed vocabulary and word usage varies too, thus the English learned here can be hellishly poor when looked at from our perspective. More so when there are teachers who do not actually speak or even understand the language they are teaching. However, a complete education, flaws and all has its merits. The main one being that one fills the criteria for the qualifications for which our young are examined.
I agree and in the final year of primary my younger daughter will agree that watching paint dry is far more exciting than her English lessons. She will also concede that she is learning grammar in the formal setting of school which includes using the books used for study purposes.
Perhaps in some people's terms we are too inclusive of our children in discussing everything with them, however our areas of so-called expertise include 'child participation' and 'children's citizenship' from which we too have learned. Therefore, we discuss and listen and particularly acknowledge points about how children do not want to be different which being let off English already marks them as, without looking at it in terms of them being foreign and the curriculum as well.
So, no matter how 'privileged' our own education was, which is why I drew that into it, we have to see things through different eyes and weigh them up against a different set of values. The outcome is as pragmatic as we can be, thus both daughters do English and will continue to do so irrespective of how good or bad, banal or boring we believe it to be.
Sure Brian. I did try to ensure my comments were focussed on our situation as I certainly don't want to tell you or others on SFN how to parent your kids, just sharing the thought process we've been through for ours. I wasn't aware we were discussing our own educational backgrounds however. I was talking about the schools my kids went to in UK before we moved to France :-)
There has been progress!
We did the entrance interview at the college (the privée catholic-ish one), she was accepted on the spot, and then ther head walked us through the timetable, and when he came to English he just said out loud, there's no point to her doing that, I'll have a think and we then had an initial discussion about what might work. So completely not as forecast, hurrah.
Thanks for all the contributions, at present I'm thinking she might do some French style English when the bacs are coming along, but not before.
As an aside, the privée used to be for richer thickies (I'm told), but now it seems to be more like a grammar school, selective according to evaluation scores in the primaire. And there you go, principles out the window, I passed the exam so my parents let me go to the high school instead of a comp, and I'm doing just the same.
Veronique ..some great points made
Very helpful info THANKS
Careful Andrew, there are a number of Oxbridge people including a teacher and myself on SFN, my OH is from the Swiss equivalent, so have all the ideals and potential to talk about 'top' schools anywhere. One of my children is 10 and learning her fourth language at present, however we have talked about whether or not to do English with her. She is of the view that a) she will be 'different' to her French friends and b) she realises that because it is the French education system and the qualifications that will count will be French ones and that thus the BAC and FAC count above all. She has already half way decided she will neither go to an English nor French university, probably German or Italian and Scotland (oddly) is her third choice. So, include your children in the negotiations, discussions and so on because it is THEIR education and lives you are making decisions about and there is no such thing as 'too young' if you wish to throw that in.
I agree with Veronique too, it is only too easy to miss out on English grammer and spelling, my children moaned about doing English throughout their school life but good marks at BAC improved their overall score so it was win win!
I would say its better to do the English course, because she would be sitting an English paper for a French BAC set by the French education system . I know it would be like watching paint dry for her but needs be.
I should add having read some more of the discussion in detail now, for our situation I couldn't disagree more with the concept of leaving the kids in a boring poorly taught English, or any for that matter, class for the sake of an exam. Having dumped ours fairly unceremoniously into French schools from some of the very top academic schools in the UK, the idea of further abandoning our educational ideals by putting up with a child being bored at school wasn't ever going to wash for us.
Our unintentional tactic has been for our collège age kids to clearly demonstrate how superior their English skills are in comparison to those of their teachers. Once the teachers have started to get embarrassed, our kids were swiftly excused with the support of the teacher and the head. We chose schools carefully however in order to get that flexibility. We ended up in a private catholic school as it seemed that the head had more flexibility, or willingness to be flexible at least, than I'd heard was the case in other schools. Once we came to lycée we took this even further and our eldest just did hist/geo and French at school last year, whilst self-teaching a program of english GCSEs in the rest of the timetable at home. The head had to run that past someone in the Academie, whatever that is, but it wasn't an issue. It helped that she was top of the year and the teachers were concerned, quite rightly, that she was going to find first year lycée somewhat tedious without a special project of some form. Not all French schools seem to be as inflexible as the stereotype suggests.
Cpompletely agree Veronique
My three are all between 3ème and première. Each is bilingual. Daughter was v good at languages and the v forward thinking english teacher thanked her for participating. Middle son was classed as arrogant until he proved that he could produce work of substance, stop annoying the teacher, then he was allowed to work independently in the cdi preparing a quiz for the other pupils. Youngest son is a know-all and refused to answer the tests in the way the teacher required - though correct he ended up with 16/20. He has now learned a little humility and this year has asked his teacher if he can do something else so he is reading authors that we don't have and writing reviews.
In all a bumpy process but I'm satisfied with all the final outcomes.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Black Hen Education. They are a French based company offering distance learning to English mother tongue children, all the way up to IGCSE English. I tried them out and found them very good, the only reason I didn't continue was that I was unable to spend enough time with my daughter explaining the principles at the beginning but with older children it shouldn't be a problem.
We are lucky in that our daughter is able to do English a year ahead of her contemporaries and when she starts 6ieme the school offers Chinese and German as options. However, I agree that she will not absorb grammar and so on without any formal lessons so think 11 is to young to opt out altogether. I'm sure the majority of us learnt a great deal of grammar after the age of 11, despite being fluent English speakers.
I agree, let her take english.
Two of my bilingual sons took english right through to the french bac and one got an 18 the other a 16. It was such a relief with all the other things they had to go through as teenagers to know that they had one subject they excelled in and they could be a positive influence on the class.
My third son changed school systems and went to do an international (english speaking) bac and I was very frustrated with his school for not allowing him to do "french" as one of his subjects. Teenagers have so much on their plates just being teenagers and one "easy subject" in this competitive world is a godsend. We moved him to another school which allows him to do french.
Quite frankly despite our (collective .. yours and mine) being seemingly bilingual, there is still a lot they can learn about written grammar and it is great as they become teenagers to have a chance to share and help fellow students which gives them confidence.
And would we ask for a dispensation from a maths class because they are top of the class? not sure I would, I would just allow them the oppertunity to shine.
Despite being bilingual, my sons still say some very funny things in both languages... One of the things that urks me at the moment is when my 19 year old uses the imperitif in english whish is not very polite... reminds me that I need to explain to him that he cant tell me what I "must' or "have to:" do, as in the french "il faut que tu".....
I'd agree with all of those who say your daughter should take the English classes. It's not thaat easy teaching grammer to a bored teenager who has better things to do in out of school time and reckons that she there is no need for all this stuff anyway because she can speak the language, can't she?. Let the teachers have the hassle