Reply to Recent feedback on Lycee Rochambeau

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[quote=Anonymous]An comment on the lack of testing - historically, the approach to admissions at Rochambeau has been entirely distinct from the current "elite private school" world of playdates and recommendations and IQ tests for preschoolers. It was a school that catered primarily to the francophone expat community and in some ways functioned as our public school. Not in the sense of being free, sadly, but in the sense that it was the default option if you wanted to keep your kid in the French system, and there wasn't this mindset to restrict access to only the very tippy top of the crop. Sometimes they did say no for capacity reasons, although usually if there was a sudden spike in kids applying for a particular grade they tried to accommodate them to the extent possible within the physical location. Bear in mind that Rochambeau's accreditation within the association of overseas French schools (AEFE) requires respecting the promotion decisions of other AEFE schools and of accredited schools in France - so when kids apply from within this network, there is no entrance exam. This is part of the appeal of France's network of overseas schools - one uniform curriculum and the ability to move around the world with minimal academic interruption - and this is why you will find expat/journalist/diplomat etc families for whom French is not the primary language, but who have chosen the French schools for continuity from assignment to assignment. For the small number of applicants coming from outside the French system, there was an exam to make sure their language skills would allow them to follow the curriculum, and to place them in the right grade level, but again it just wasn't an exclusionary mentality. And for the preschool years, there was really no test at all other than making sure there was some francophone presence at home. I'm pretty sure my "application" was basically a piece of paper that said "We are French speakers and our daughter is 3, please enroll her in petite section."
Basically, to some degree, the school aimed to welcome as much of the francophone school-age population as feasible, not just a small crowd of super-elite families or super-gifted kids.

I use the past tense because I know things are shifting in terms of short-term expat vs long-term expat vs francophone locals vs non-francophone locals and that is influencing how admissions run, but this is the historical context explaining the approach.[/quote]

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