Moving to France as a family: choosing the school, enrolling the children, getting the first weeks right

What broad families of schooling are there in France?

The first family, the most widespread, is the local state school. Every address falls within the catchment of a primary school, then a lower and an upper secondary school: this is sectorisation. Primary enrolment is handled by the town hall, secondary education goes through allocation procedures. Only the canteen, out-of-school care and certain options are charged for. For an arriving family, it is the most direct and most integrating route: children mix with neighbourhood classmates and school French settles quickly, especially in the early years.

The second family is the private school under contract of association. It follows the same national curriculum and prepares the same national diplomas, with its own educational project, religious or not, and generally moderate fees. Enrolment is dealt with directly with the school, on file, subject to available places, and applications are sometimes lodged long before the start of the year, especially in communes where places are in demand.

The third family gathers international and bilingual streams, whose offer varies greatly from city to city. Some cities host international sections within state schools, where part of the teaching is delivered in another language. Private bilingual schools offer immersion paths from primary to sixth form, sometimes outside the contract, with their own programmes. These streams almost always involve an assessment of the child’s language level. The offer, rich in large metropolitan areas, becomes scarcer elsewhere: check what exists around your address before choosing the home, not the other way round.

What is the enrolment calendar, and which documents are needed?

The school year starts at the end of summer, and everything is decided beforehand. For state primary schools, town hall enrolment generally takes place the previous spring. For private and international schools, each establishment publishes its own application windows, often earlier still. Finally, some secondary streams fall under centralised procedures: entering preferences online, uploading documents, response windows. These platforms wait for nobody, and a missing document at the wrong time can set a file back a whole year. The deadlines, specific to each procedure, are verified each year with the relevant services.

Arriving mid-year remains possible: schooling being compulsory from three to sixteen, schools take children as they come, subject to available places and the catchment of your address. A mid-year integration is simply prepared with a complete file and early dialogue with the teaching team.

On the documents side, the core set is constant across school families:

• A recent proof of address: energy bill, rent receipt or tax notice linked to the family home.
• Civil status documents: family record book or translated birth certificates, identity documents for parents and child.
• An up-to-date vaccination record, or its foreign equivalent presented to a health professional.
• The school file: reports from previous years and the leaving certificate from the original school, translated if needed.
• Depending on the stream, a school insurance certificate and the specific documents requested by the establishment.

How do you prepare this file from abroad?

Distance turns every document into an expedition. Three reflexes lighten the load. Gather first what is already at hand, reports, health records, certificates, and start the sworn translations as early as possible: they take time and underpin every file. Write rather than call: town halls and school offices reply by email, at hours when you are working or sleeping depending on your time zone, and a written trace avoids asking for the same thing three times. Build finally a single digital file, accessible from anywhere, to share with the person representing you on the ground.

If a scouting trip is feasible, use it to visit the shortlisted schools and ask your questions face to face: class sizes, modern languages on offer, weekly rhythm, out-of-school care, support for non-French-speaking children. These answers refine the choice of schooling, sometimes even the choice of neighbourhood.