If you’re an American living in France, at a glance, French public elementary school may seem pretty much like the school you know. But differences quickly crop up, and you might want to be aware of what’s in store. As an expat parent with a son who’s currently in CM1, the French equivalent of 4th grade, I’ve had many surprises when it comes to the French elementary school experience over the years.
The French school system, headed by L’Éducation Nationale, is standardized throughout the country, and efforts are especially made to ensure the same level of quality in teaching, curriculum, and academic opportunities nationwide. There will, of course, be differences in things like how the school is run, what’s on the school menu, and so on. These can vary from region to region, or even school to school.
Things like geography, local culture, and population will definitely have an influence on your kid’s French school experience. However, the following commonalities are pretty standard among the parents and kids I know in different regions of France. When it comes to the differences between French and American schools, here are a few things you should definitely keep in mind.
1. French School Lunches are Sophisticated
You may have heard that in French schools, kids use real cutlery and glassware, and eat elaborate, fancy meals. There are lots of facts about life in other countries that turn out to be exaggerations or downright stereotypes, but I can tell you that this one is the real deal.
School lunches in French public elementary schools are served on real plates, and the students, regardless of how young they are, use real cutlery and glasses. If they want more water in their glass, they use a pitcher at the center of the table to refill it. The idea is to teach kids table manners and how to eat properly.
I also think it’s because French culture in general tends to encourage kids to be independent and adult-like as quickly as possible. No plastic trays or cups here, and no plastic cutlery, either. You are at a real lunch, just like you might experience at a workplace cafeteria or at home.
As for the meals themselves, they tend to be far more elaborate than what I used to eat in my public elementary school in the U.S. For instance, a typical lunch, recently posted on the school menu website (which most school districts have) for kids in preschool and elementary school in Paris’s 12 arrondissement, includes the following:
Salade verte vinaigrette (Salad with vinaigrette)
Quiche aux légumes (Vegetable quiche)
Yaourt saveur citron (Lemon yogurt)
Fruit de saison (Seasonal fruit)
Baguette (Baguette)
Other main courses for the week include cod with butternut squash purée, and veal à la dijonnaise, as well as dishes from other countries and cultures, like chorba, vegetarian chili, and dahl. If you clicked on the menu link, you may have noticed that every daily lunch and snack menu is peppered with logos showing that most, if not all, of the food served is organic and/or cruelty-free, or ethically sourced.
While school menus differ from region to region and school to school, and while some may be more focused on things like organic food than others, the basic idea of diverse, balanced, relatively healthy offerings remains the same—as you can see, for instance, on this school menu from the commune of Ghyvelde, in northern France, or this one for schools in the city of Saintes, in Charente-Maritime.
You might think that food like this comes with a high price tag, but one of the things I like most about lunch in French public elementary schools is that parents pay based on their household income, not a flat fee.
On the other hand, unlike in some other countries, there aren’t consistent or alternative options for kids with dietary restrictions, including those who only eat halal or kosher food, or kids with food allergies. One of the reasons for this is that parents can take their kids out of school during the two-hour lunch and recess period and let them eat meals adapted to their diet at home. Still, this isn’t ideal if a parent works, of course. And unfortunately, kids can’t bring their own lunch to school, which makes this an even more challenging issue.
Even parents whose kids should be able to eat a typical French school lunch still have their complaints, though. Despite how nutritious, organic, diverse, and downright classy French school lunches are, many parents I know will grumble that, “the meals could be better.” But it’s impossible for me to agree. After all, during my elementary school days back in ‘80s and ‘90s America, school lunches often consisted of pizza, tater tots, and some sort of unrecognizable lettuce mixture usually classified as coleslaw. I can’t even imagine what a typical French parent would think of something like that!
2. Penmanship is a Big Deal in French Schools
I’ll never forget how worried I was when my son’s CP (kindergarten) teacher told me and my husband that we needed to meet with her because our son was having trouble with his writing. I wondered if he was having difficulty expressing himself, or if he lacked French vocabulary because I spoke to him so often in English. Or maybe it was grammar that was the issue….
When we finally met with the teacher, it turns out she wasn’t talking about any of that. In French, l’écriture generally means “writing,” but also refers to “handwriting.” As far as my son was concerned, the latter was the issue. It wasn’t that he couldn’t make legible letters, but they didn’t look enough like the standard French print and cursive letters that everyone is supposed to learn in school.
Those letters are, admittedly, beautiful, but I couldn’t help but wonder what all the fuss was about. If my son’s handwriting was easy to read, what did it matter that his x’s didn’t look like two c’s elegantly leaning back-to-back, or where he began when he made a letter b?
It turns out, though, that while U.S. schools have largely dropped cursive from the curriculum (a move I am against, despite my pragmatic approach to handwriting), the French still consider penmanship important. In fact, while it’s not as common as it once was, some businesses still request handwritten cover letters and call upon graphologists to see whether or not you’d be a good employee. I even have a suspicion that I was once turned down for a job here because of my somewhat messy handwriting, which it turns out my son has inherited. I also think that some of the fuss about penmanship in French schools has to do with the idea of equality. One of the three founding principles of the current French Republic, l’égalité influences school here in some significant ways, and I think the fact that everyone’s writing should look the same way is one of them. Whatever the case, if your kid’s handwriting isn’t up to snuff, their teacher may suggest taking them to the psychomotricien(ne), a therapist who works with fine motor skills.
3. The French PTA is Powerless
In most schools I know of in the U.S., the PTA (Parent-Teacher Association) is a pretty powerful ruling body. They can push to bring changes to their school or even their school district. In some communities, certain members are even feared.
I’m not particularly power hungry, so a few years ago when my son’s teacher asked if anyone would like to be on the conseil des parents, the rough equivalent of the PTA in French schools, I didn’t really think anything of it. But then the teacher, as well as the principal, told us there weren’t enough parents who’d volunteered to be on the conseil des parents and they really needed anyone who could help out. That probably should have struck me as a red flag—after all, you’d think that out of the entire school there would be at least ten parents (the required number) who craved PTA power.
In the end, I decided to join. I figured maybe I’d be able to help make some positive changes to the school, and I could also be a line of defense against any other parent who suggested something I didn’t like.
But when I went to my first meeting of the conseil des parents, I realized that neither of those things were ever going to happen.
In France, the conseil des parents is basically just a sort of communication liaison between parents and teachers. At meetings, the principal and other heads of departments or individual teachers will speak about school news, policies, and so on. While the parents can ask questions or even make suggestions, they have no power to veto or change those things. They can’t introduce or enact any new ideas or policies, either.
So, basically, being on the PTA in France is like attending a really long school orientation meeting three times a year, and every time, you spend a significant portion of that meeting being read the school’s policies (which haven’t changed since the last one). It all brings a sort of, “This could have been an email” vibe to the whole thing.
Maybe even more frustrating, at least at my son’s school, is that most parents I know aren’t really even aware of what the conseil des parents does. If they have a question about school policies or upcoming events, they usually just ask their friends or their kid’s teacher.
So, if you’re a parent in France and you get asked to be on the conseil des parents, only take the position if you don’t mind meeting for long hours a few times a year, and really want to be in the know about what’s going on at the school. Don’t expect to make any changes. The one good thing about the powerlessness of the conseil des parents, on the other hand, is that you won’t see your school transformed by a group of parents with some kind of moral agenda you don’t agree with.
4. Strike Days are More Common than Snow Days
Between the lack of snow and busy city streets, here in Paris it’s pretty much impossible for school to shut down for a snow day. That may not be the case in every part of France, but one thing is for sure: Whether you live somewhere that gets snow or not, your kid’s school is likely to shut down several days a year for an equally unpredictable force of nature—strikes.
Strikes are such a part of life in France that even when you make travel plans, some part of you is thinking, “Will anyone involved in this flight or train ride go on strike?”
When it comes to French public elementary schools, strikes usually happen with little notice and no explanation. There’s also rarely, if ever, any kind of demonstration involved. The teachers are just absent that day. To me, this is a bit suspicious—especially, for instance, when my son’s school went on strike one day in December. No explanation was given, as usual, and all I could think was, “Maybe they had to catch up on holiday shopping.”
But woe betide you if you complain to a fellow parent or dare to question what’s going on. You’ll only hear something like, “It’s their right to strike!” Of course it is, but I have to admit, while I absolutely support strikes for actual reasons, it would be helpful to know why I’m suddenly scrambling for childcare.
It’s not just teachers who can suddenly decide to take a day to go on strike. You might find that for an entire week, you have to come pick up your child during the 2-hour lunch and recess period because the cafeteria workers are on strike. Or maybe it’s the animateurs—the people who watch kids during recess periods and run the after school programs. This may mean everything from having to take your kid out of school early, to having to get them during the lunch period and bring them back.
Maybe most frustrating at all is that you rarely, if ever, find out if the strike had any positive results. Most of the time, the teachers and staff just return to school the next day (or week) as if nothing had happened. If you want to know what went on that day and what impact it might have had, you’ll have to research it on your own time.
5. French Schools Focus a Lot on Memorization
When my son got into the upper grades of French elementary school, I was looking forward to reading the little essays and compositions he’d probably be writing. Only, there haven’t been any of those.
Writing, from creative work like poetry or stories, to a paragraph about your family or hobbies, is a typical school exercise for kids in American schools. It’s so typical that you even see it in nostalgia-evoking movies like A Christmas Story, where it’s even somewhat of a plot point. Not so in France.
Here, instead of compositions, your kid will have dictées, poems or prose that their teacher will read word-by-word and that they’ll have to copy down, hoping to get the spelling and verb endings right. And instead of writing their own poems, French kids will come home with poems to memorize. Often, they don’t even get a choice of poem—everyone in the class has to memorize the same thing.
These exercises are so common in France that they’re often evoked in popular cinema. For instance, in one of my favorite films about French childhood, Moi César, 10 ans 1/2, 1,39 m, reciting a poem is a plot point (albeit not quite as important to the story as Ralph’s theme paper about what he wants for Christmas).
As a writer, I’m disappointed that my son isn’t bringing home work written in his own words. Writing is such a great way to learn self-expression, spelling, grammar, and vocabulary. I know he’ll at least get practice with the last three by doing dictées and memorizing poems. But it seems like he’s missing out on something crucial.
There seems to be a lot less place and encouragement for imagination and individual expression in French schools, and a lot more of a sense of everyone being responsible and logically learning things like grammar and classic works of literature. Both have their place and value, and, thankfully, the French system clearly doesn’t stifle creative minds. France is full of artists, writers, musicians, actors, and others in creative fields. And on the positive side, many of them will remember some of the best work of their poetic predecessors well into adulthood. Recently, for instance, my son had to memorize a short poem by Paul Verlaine. When my French husband heard it, he recognized it immediately and recited some of the lines along with him!
6. French Kids Have a Lot of School Vacations
The French school year is similar to the school year in many other places. School starts in early September and ends in early July. But you may have noticed that, while Americans celebrate three months of summer vacation, the French summer vacation is only about two months long.
This isn’t because French kids get less school vacation. In fact, they get a lot of time off, and not just because of those strike days. The French school calendar calls for a two-week school break every six weeks or so. This means there are long-ish vacations in October, December, February, and April, in addition to that two-month long school break.
And then there are individual holidays or days off, not to mention the French tradition of faire le pont (“make the bridge”): If a holiday falls on a Thursday or Tuesday, the school will often be closed that Friday or Monday as well, to make a four-day mini vacation.
Personally, I love this way of doing things, especially the two-week breaks. I think it’s good for kids, and, as a former teacher’s assistant in French public schools, I know it’s great for the staff’s mental well-being, too. In terms of family life, it gives you a lot more options for when to go on vacation. For instance, instead of spending a hot summer visiting friends and relatives in the U.S., my family and I usually go to America during the October break.
You might think that all of these vacations are hard on working parents. But here’s another thing I love about the French school system: During every two-week vacation period, as well as the summer vacation period, schools offer a sort of day camp, called the centre de loisirs. (The same type of program is also offered every Wednesday afternoon when school is in session, since there’s no classes on Wednesday afternoons in France.)
Kids enrolled in the centre de loisirs can stay at the school and participate in a variety of activities all day (and have lunch and a snack), and there are usually optional outings. These vary depending on where a school is located, among other factors, but personally, I’m usually impressed by the range of options in our school district—everything from a day at the park, to an afternoon at a museum, to a free movie at a local theater. My son and the other kids at the centre de loisirs once even took a day trip to Versailles.
In addition to keeping your kids busy while you’re at work, another great thing about the centre de loisirs is that it’s accessible to everyone, since, like school lunch, the cost is low and based on your family’s income. Whether they’re at home, on vacation, or at the centre de loisirs, school breaks help French kids unwind and discover new things. That, to me, is one of the best parts about growing up in France.
So, Should You Put Your Kid in a French School?
French public elementary schools can be a surprising experience for parents who didn’t grow up here. There will probably be things you love and things you downright hate.
But whenever I’m in doubt about something, I try to look at my son’s classmates, as well as the adults I know who went to school in France. None of them are or were the perfect little French children you read about in certain books that idealize “the French way” of living. But most of them seem like normal, well-adjusted people. Plus, they can usually quote a few lines of classic French poetry, which is a pretty cool bonus, if you ask me!
Alysa Salzberg is an American writer, worrier, teacher, travel planner, and cookie enthusiast who’s lived in Paris, France, for nearly two decades. Author of Hearts at Dawn, a historical fantasy novel set during the 1870-1871 Siege of Paris, she often shares things she loves about life and history in the City of Light on her blog at https://alysasalzberg.medium.com/ and on Instagram @lamarquisedecarabas.
