Are there any parents that send their kids to the Lycee franco-japonais in Tokyo? I am hoping to get some impressions on the school as we are considering placing our daughter there for preschool... Any information welcome.

We are thinking of enrolling our son to the lycee franco-japonais next year. He'll turn 3 next year and would like to start from 3rd semester.

We would like to hear comments, suggestions about the kindergarten. Such as :

-how are the teachers
-Do they welcome non french kids ?
-how expensive is the school fee compare to other international kindy ?

The lycee franco-japonais has a webpage at: http://www.lfjt.or.jp/htm/index.htm

Yes, I've looked at that webpage but they don't say anything much about teachers, non french kids or fees. Since we are living abroad, I've sent them an email but they don't reply.

I would love to have some comments from parents who have their kids in that kindy.

Thank you for helping.

Apparently, they are not in a rush to reply to e-mails. They never answered my inquiries either. By the way, the fees are posted at http://www.lfjt.or.jp/htm/inscript.htm
Compared to other international schools, the lycee is among the cheapest, at least for French nationals. If I hear of other comments, I'll pass them along to you. By the way, you should keep in mind that the school mainly provides for the French diplomatic and expatriate community, so the school atmosphere might be somewhat 'exclusive'. But that is just my feeling... Would love to hear from other people!

I've never had any luck getting answers from them via email either. AND I've not had a whole lot of luck with phone calls (possibly because I don't really speak French myself).

Anyway, I've moved this conversation in with the rest of the international schools so pay attention to the new link at the bottom!

I get the impression that the school is financially supported by the French government, which may explain why their fees appear low. It might also explain why they don't answer email inquiries... (French bureaucracy being notorious.) I'm also amazed at the size of the school (around 750 students!) I had not realized that the French presence here was that large.

Thank you for the replies.

We live in singapore and the fees in the french school here are also quite cheap compare to other int'l schools but that is only for french nationals. Its almost the double for foreigners.
Although the french community is not that large here, they have over 900 students. If I look at all my french friends, they have at least 2 children in the family and quite a few have 3. My french friends in Japan also have 3 children. Wow...

I've decided to ask my parents who live in japan to call them (we are japanese).

Lycee franco-japonais: still waiting to hear from anyone who sends his child to there. We are considering enrolling daughter in 1st grade, but are still ambivalent...

Good luck Caroline! We just met a wonderful 12 year old at the swimming pool this past Saturday, named Valentine, who comes from a French family with 4 kids, attends the Lycee franco-japonais and whose father accompanying him had absolutely no interest in letting his son visit with us (and meet our dog). This isn't the first time. We meet French in our local park very often since we live in an area filled with French expats, but we have never been able to get past the rudimentary beginning of exchanging a few friendly words. It's really hard to build contacts in that community.

It's a bit far for you to come and hang out on a sunny Saturday or Sunday, but the park, is only a few blocks from Myogadani station on the Marunouchi line with the Bunkyo-ku Sports Center at one side of it. There are two French families sending their kids to my daughter's school, and I can talk to them easily enough because I am part of that school, but it's the wrong school! Maybe they have some friends using the Lycee that they might impose on for your sake? If you want to give it a try, please email me directly.

Cornelia,

I think you can't judge the "French" just based on your experience at the park!

I am French and I did think exactly the same things about Americans, Britishs, Canadians, Australians, New-Zealanders etc. who never reply to my emails after we had a nice little chat at the park .

I also invited home some moms amd kids to play with my son and never managed to have an invitation back!

The truth is, when you arrive in Japan, especially directly from France, you naturally turn to people who speak your own language and have same culture (organized play dates in the park are NOT usual in the French culture for example).

My husband and I are both French and my son was "made in Japan" but delivered in New York in Sep 2001. He was raised in Manhattan, a very international city, but hard to make friendship with the "locals".

So, our son has both nationalities, American and French, and he attends an international school here, yet I did not get acquainted with american moms.

That is the reason, as I explained to Caroline, I created my own forum in French for French speaking moms.(BTW, If you know french speaking moms interested to join this list let them just contact me: asterixaf@yahoo.com )and of course, Cornelia, if you would like to have a coffee to share your experiences with a "French mom", please do not hesitate to contact me as well, I would be more than delighted to meet you.

Cheers

Anne

Dear Anne, I really hope I did not sound like I was judging all French "from my experience at the park". I spent my 7th month of pregnancy in France. (One last romp across Europe before being tied down to home and hearth. Mostly I was asked if the planes were going to let me on for the flight back to Japan.)

No, I thought I was primarily saying that it is really hard to get an "in" on the community that sends their kids to the Lycee. If I offended anyone please allow me to apologize. May I ask, are you or will you be sending your kids to the Lycee?

Well, we are blessed with a bunch of rain all last night and probably most of today. So yesterdays excellent weather was most fortunate. We went to the Kita-ku Jidokan Festival over in Asukayama park (at Oji), which is an enormous affair compared to what the jidokans muster together in Bunkyo-ku. It was much like an international food fair and the stage had non-stop performances all day long. We were hanging out with the Africans. and since my Japanese is not so great, some of our communication was taking place in... French. Well, I met someone and we started talking. We switched back and forth from English to French and German. And it turns out that this person is a teacher at the Lycee! I soon managed to bring up the topic of the difficulty in getting information about the school from the school itself (never answering emails, message answering machine on in the middle of the day, not returning calls, etc.)

We laughed about it. I was told that this teacher's own letters to the director had never been answered. But that there are a new director and vice director this year, and maybe some things will change. Also:

• the school is busting at the seams and the primary motivation for splitting the school up into two locations (moving the high school out to Asakusa) was lack of space.
• there are enough kindergarten and lower elementary schoool students to make up another classroom, but no spare room to put them in, and that there is a waiting list.
• the school is not a "private" school but belongs to the public school system of France and answers to the French government (not to the parents) (which I sort of already knew).
• the independent Sakura pre-school is still going strong (it started about 2 years ago).
• And finally that there is an independently published web site in French by a French person living in Tokyo that has some kind of e-list or discussions or something. Maybe that would be yours, Anne?

Dear Cornelia,

You made very good points and I am glad you could discussed yesterday with a French teacher from the Lycee.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to give information about the new French e-list I just created last month to support moms (or moms-to-be)that feel they need to have a french cultural environment to express themselves and got information in French:

http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/tokyo_mamans/

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE :
To become a member, you must send me a quick note in French at: asterixafab@yahoo.com to introduce yourself and motivation to join the forum. Then you will receive an invitation message to join the group. Et voila ...a bientot sur le forum.

Thank you
Anne

I think that it's great what you are doing Anne, and I would hope that there is someone in every niche group recognizing a need who would step forward and do something about it like you have!

By the way to everyone:
These forums now have about 1500 subscribers of which easily a third are probably somehow non-viable. That means that there are an estimated 1000 participants. It has grown larger than I had imagined, and beyond my personal capacity to research and answer inquiries that go unanswered for a while. So (once more) it is most appreciated when anyone who knows something that would help someone else, they please step up and share what they know! And please be specific!

I`d love to have some information about this school. How is the study, the teachers and do the parents get together sometime ? I would also like to hear from non french parents /and/ children whose mother tongue is not french.

If my child joins the school, he will be in kindergarten 2 (grande section) and will be joining Grade 1 next september. He speaks very little french and my concern is whether or not the school is supportive to children like him.

Dear Cornelia,
I am deperate to hear from parents whose children attend the French school. Have you ever heard anything about the school ?
Thank you

Some people on the "Tokyo Mamans" Board may be able to help you. I am guessing some have their kids at the Lycee or know people who do. You could post there or also contact the site administrator.
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/tokyo_mamans/messages
BTW, you can also call the school and request a meeting with the director and a tour of the school.

Thank you very much, I will try to post a message on that site.
Yes, I have contacted the school but since we are not in Tokyo yet, I haven`t visited the school yet.

Dear Kaneko,
I have two friends whose kids are going to the Lycee. One mother is French and one mother is American with a French husband. Both mothers have a couple of issues with the school due to special circumstances regarding their kids. To be very, very frank, there isn't a mother I've spoken to with kids in school (any school, be it Japanese or International, be it this one or that one) that hasn't had issues, including myself. The bottom line is that there will always be one or two aspects of a school that are not as good as one would like them to be. In both cases (of my two friends) the lower tuition rate due to the kids having French nationality is definitely one deciding factor (it is just under Y1million/year for French nationals).

At the Lycee they start English instruction early (I'm not sure if this is for everyone or if parents get to choose this as an option). If your child is very good at English, the English instruction there may be beneath your child's level, even in the "advanced" section, and there may be some difficulty in finding a solution so that your child doesn't have to sit their bored during English lessons. But this is a matter to be worked on between the parent, the child and the teacher. No single school can accommodate perfectly every single child, especially in this international community where many children are being raised tri-lingually. You will find similar issues with parents at all the other schools as well. If you want your kid to learn French in a total immersion situation, then the Lycee would definitely be the place for them! Do keep in mind that they are at capacity, and your application may be turned down. Best to have a backup school in mind.

Also the Lycee has a school lunch program, and they require participation in it. I know of one case where the parent was able to get out of paying for it (due to very stringent dietary requirements for her child who is "allergic to practically everything"), only after a major battle. I think they are very loath to make exceptions because of course in order to run the program, they need a certain volume to make it cost effective.

Further food for thought: When researching schools, what is the school's purpose? Schools like The British School, French Lycee, Deutsche Schule, American School in Japan, have the primary purpose of schooling kids of the respective nationalities so that when they move back to their home countries, those kids will be able to re-enter the mainstream schooling system with minimal difficulty or none. Some of the school missions have been re-written to include concepts about preparing individuals ready for the challenges of the global economy, and stuff like that. But the old international schools extending from one country or another still have the primary mission of giving kids from those cultures a home away from home, and turning out citizens true to those cultures.

Nothing wrong with that, but something to keep in mind when looking for a school. How do you see your kid as bi-cultural with France, or the UK, or the USA? If you are interested in the Chinese school, do you want the political/cultural influence to be Taiwan or China? (The Deutsche Schule doesn't take anyone where German is not spoken in the home.)

Cornelia,

Thanks for the info on the Lycee. Just wanted to add that I have finally decided to enrol my daughter there starting next year.

There's a few points that need to be stressed:

1. Under the French system, elementary schooling starts on the year that the child turns 6. This means that your child may very well be 5 when he starts... This seems way too early especially given the nature of the program. By the way, in my country (Canada), kids need to be six by September 1st to enrol in 1st grade.

2. The program calls for the children in the last year of kindergarden (Grande Section de Maternelle) to know how to write all the letters of the alphabet, in script and cursive, know the sounds associated with all the letters, and be able to copy nouns and sentences by the end of the year. This means that when they start first grade, the program moves along very quickly onto the reading and writing of syllables and whole words. My kid did not learn any of this at yochien, that's for sure!

3. The school lunch is compulsory for kindergarten kids, but later you have the option to chose. I don't think they force it down your throat (so to speak!) but it woudl be worth checking on my next visit (I'll keep everyone posted)

4. There's a growing "Half" community at the school who is pushing for a stronger Japanese program. It's in place now and working successfully I have been told. The fact that more mixed kids are enrolled means that the school is more receptive to local culture while retaining its objective of forming the kids to reenter the French system.

5. There are 2 parents associations that organize various after-school activities at ridiculously cheap prices for Japan (about 30,000 yen per year for an hour of class each week) This may compensate a bit for the high tuition. They are:

1. ASSOCIATION DES FAMILLES DU LYCEE FRANCO-JAPONAIS DE TOKYO
http://www.familles-lycee-tokyo.com/

2. ASSOCIATION DES PARENTS D'ELEVES
http://www.ape-japon.net/

For those people looking at alternatives to the French Lycee: I just heard from another mother that Tokyo International School in Tamachi/Mita has an unsung after school French program three days a week (but they do have an English ability requirement for admission, after a certain age).

Horizon School which is open to multi-lingual kids, has opened a branch in Omotesando (see the discussion for that school in this section).

There are 3 French families with kids enrolled at New International School in Ikebukuro, and though there is no French support at the school, they do accept younger grades with only a little English. Their program is dual-language (English and Japanese), meaning their are two teachers, one English speaking and one Japanese in every classroom.

The French e-list for Tokyo is now at :
http://tokyo-mamans.tripod.com/
and the discussion forum at :
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/tokyo_mamans/
and
E-list from French Embassy:
* Membres : 1195
* Créé : 27 Mai 2004
* Langue : Francais
http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/tokyo_petitesannonces/
Gilles

I heard from a french mom thatthe lycee has started to accept non french speaking children to compensate the number of students that left after 3/11. These children get very little support from the school both accademic and social wise. The school also has this so called bilingual english/french classes to attract more english speaking children..but on the other hand, they don't have any english studying books and have very few english reading books in the library.

As for the administration, apparently, nothing has really changed. Just like what were said above, they are in no rush to reply to emails or in many cases don't even bother to reply. Don't expect them to reply when you ask for help about bullying. ! I was told that they are bullyings going on (just like anywhere) but there, you must solve them yourself.

The good point is that the school has moved to Itabashi in the northern part of Tokyo (correct me if I'm wrong). Looks like it's more spacious and clean.

The food I heard is good too...not sure about what they serve thought.

They also have school buses now.

Hope it helps.