My son would agree with you, he spends hours out of school working on stuff to keep the pupils interested whereas some of his other colleagues who teach english just copy stuff off the internet and the pupils get bored and also the SEGPA english classes he takes - they are extremely interested in learning as he makes it fun and being fairly young, knows what they like.
It will change of course from school to school teacher to teacher. But French students are well behind their German, Dutch, Scandinavian counterparts in terms of speaking English at any given age.
My daughter is in Terminale and she does not do anything like what you describe. There are two other kids in the class who can speak English well. One is Polish and the other is Spanish. The others struggle.
But I always ask myself the question why I meet so many young people in low paid dead end jobs in France that can speak English at a very respectable level. Bordering on they could work in the UK or anywhere else in the world.
So where did they learn their English ? Not at school. Their level is far too good. Or maybe just the basics.
I guess some have had English lessons through the pole empoi. And that is a very different teaching method. Teaching English as a foreign language type thing.
I dunno. I am sure there are many reasons.
Has prunelle been hacked?
I wonder however if those children are as good at Spanish as the ones I have in class. English is their 2nd foreign language. German and Dutch are easy if you speak English so I imagine it cuts both ways (I speak German and Dutch😉)
What sort of lycée does your daughter go to? In lycée général, LLCER is one of the common options for the Bac, that’s what I teach (langues, littérature et civilisation étrangères et régionales). Euro classes are also common, my lycée has them for Spanish and English. Everyone has 2 compulsory foreign languages as a minimum. 3 hours/week in 2de, 2½ in 1ère and 2 in T°.
And (yielding to my feline tendencies) I often wonder why so many anglophones are so bad at French, when they choose to live here.
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That’s exactly what the compulsory curriculum consists of, language lessons. Lit is separate, a Euro or International section is another thing.
I had some Icelanders in class last week, they do an exchange with the Euro section, their English is good but no better than my better pupils - and they learn Danish and English at school, these visitors also learn French but all communication between them and my pupils was in English.
You may not realise French is spoken by about 300 million people (so world #5 behind Mandarin, English, Spanish and Arabic) and is the official language of 32 countries. Practically nobody but Scandinavian countries speaks their languages and their populations are tiny, of course they need a common vehicular language.
Are French doctors not obligated to get informed consent?
If so they can’t meet that obligation unless they can communicate in the patient’s language.
The NHS provides translaters for this very reason - AIUI the French consider it’s the patient’s responsibility.
Or perhaps pruned? 
You have raised so many interesting points and questions, I don’t know where to start. Linquistics is such a fascinating subject especially for someone like me who struggles with their own language never mind others. Im gifted at cockney slang mind you. Banlieue French not so much. But it is kind of the same.
Your question above is a fair and very thought provoking question.
Possibly people think they will pick the language up in a couple of years. A few can, most won’t. Cheap houses and lovely countryside in France probably outweighs not being able to communicate in most cases.
Many French move to the UK with broken English. Well in fact a lot of nationalities move to the UK with NO English. A lot of those nationalities have no intention of learning English. France is not unique.
In my case I have more fun picking things up as I go long. That is what I have always enjoyed. OK I have a safety net of a French family……but I am not sure I would have moved to France if I was fluent in the language at the time. Not that I am fluent now.
You could argue the same about those who move to America. Speaking English is not a prerequisite to speaking American and being able to survive America. Excuse the pun.
I think demographics and purpose of immigration are key here.
The majority of people moving to the UK are young and therefore horny and they’re also looking for work. So they’re highly incentivised to learn English, which they do very quickly, to a high level.
I get the impression most Brits moving to France are neither young nor looking for love (because they’re already in a marriage with a non-French-native speaker) or work (because they’re retired).
My retired (very affluent very educated) French neighbours want to move to Portugal. Their house is to die for and the area here is as good as it gets in France.
They are disillusioned with France, French politics and all the rest. They have had enough. Macron in particular.
Neither of them speak Portuguese, Spanish or English for that matter. But the attraction of Portugal and the sun outweighs the communication issue.
Having said that, the Portuguese do speak French.
There are advantages to having execrable French, Portuguese, etc. You can live in a nice bubble, oblivious to local politics and social trends that would annoy the heck out of you if you were in your home country with a perfect understanding of everything going on around you.
As @Helenochka says, being young and forming friendships and relationships is a great help to learning any language. You get much more exposure at work, in the bar with workmates etc than inactifs could. And English is widely regarded as being the language to learn, so French youngsters have an impetus which British ones don’t.
The snake-oil merchants who claim to be able to make you fluent in 3 months or whatever don’t help when the inevitable happens.
Ans many Brits have the dream of moving to France for the food, wine and lifestyle (whatever one of those is): the hard work of learning the language doesn’t figure in their calculations.
I’m very happily moving to Germany next year, I’m not sure I’d be so sanguine about it if I didn’t speak near-native German. Speaking entirely personally, living somewhere and not being able to have a proper conversation, read novels or newspapers or understand the media; understanding and communicating only partially, on only a very superficial and nuance-free level, would be torture for me.
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one need only be inactif if one chooses to be so…
We came over here before retirement age… with “nothing to do” but we have never been inactif…
We had to speak French from the word go… 
and it’s been a funtime ever since those early “howlers” 
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That is sad news, for us anyway, will you still post here or transfer your allegiances to Survive Germany? 
BTW, How are you healing since the T-boning? 
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Is that what it’s called? Excellent new expression, thank you!
Still hirpling about like Nosferatu’s granny but I’m sure I’m getting better and better, I can go up 2 steps walking normally today 
Now you desert English for Scottish. A T-Bone for what happened to you is not a new expression, possibly not English either but American. 
But I am pleased that you are improving. 
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Look at it through a different lens. Doctor explains something serious to patient in their non-native language which may or may not be 100% correct. Patient misunderstands with dire consequences. Where the fault lies is obscured.
Instead if doctor explains 100% accurately in their own language, then it is clear that patient must make sure they understand in their own language, and if not ask more questions/get a professional translator. If things go awry it can be tracked down where the fault lay.
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New to me I love learning new expressions!
I’ve noticed, over the last few months if not longer, articles in iNews about people running into difficulties after moving abroad, usually to a sunny EU country. (Obviously newspapers tend to run repeated articles on the same subject if they seem popular.)
The recurring theme is language difficulties, especially as people get older and sicker. (There’s a subtheme of cultural differences, especially the way that EU countries expect the family to look after their parents.) People move out because they want sun, a cheap cost of living including housing, and what they see as a relaxed way of living. They join clubs, generally with other expats, and stay in the bubble, learning no more than what one adult child called “survival Spanish”.
There is also the problem of many EU nationals they encounter wanting to learn/practice English which reinforces the erroneous idea that English is all you need. Then add UK governments which have failed to invest in language teaching over decades, and MFLs being much harder to learn than, say, Media Studies.