British Pupils Fly Off to Private School in France and Save Pounds 15,000 Ayear ‘

By GLEN OWEN

SOARING school fees are forcing an increasing number of British parents to send their children to France to be educated and save up to Pounds 15,000 a year.

French schools, which beat their British counterparts in international rankings, offer a year’s education including boarding fees for as little as Pounds 9,000 compared with Pounds 24,000 in Britain.

And the advent of cheap flights on budget airlines such as Ryanair has made them easily accessible to families, particularly in the South East of England. One French private school even has more so-called ‘Ryanair kids’ than native pupils.

News of the cross-Channel brain drain could not come at a worse time for British public schools. Last week, 50 of them including Eton, Harrow and Winchester were fined a total of Pounds 3.5million after being found guilty of fee-fixing by the Office of Fair Trading.

At the Ecole Privee De Tersac in Bordeaux, which has six British pupils paying just Pounds 9,300 a year in tuition fees and boarding charges, the lessons are all in French and the children work towards the baccalaureate, the rigorous diploma which many British universities regard as a better guide to ability than A-levels.

‘The non-French-speaking students have intensive lessons and, when they become fluent, we integrate them in a normal French curriculum,’ said a spokeswoman for the school, which has just 15 pupils in each class compared with an average of about 23 in British schools.

More than half of the 40 pupils at Chavagnes College, a boys school set up near Nantes four years ago, are from Britain and fly out at the start of each term. The fees there are Pounds 8,950 a year.

Principal and founder Ferdi McDermott said he can afford to charge less because land and property costs were lower in France. All 11 teachers are English and most have Masters degrees or PhDs. He added: ‘It’s cheaper for parents to fly their children out here than to put them on the train to Ampleforth in the North of England. They have been priced out of those schools.’ Ian Mackay, 17, of Barnham, West Sussex, joined Chavagnes in September. He said: ‘I travel to school from Gatwick, which is about a 50-minute drive from home. You can expect to get a return fare for about Pounds 80 if you book ahead of time.

‘Several things motivated our choice of Chavagnes but it was definitely the low fees that made it a possibility for my parents.’ John Underwood, 15, of Cambridge, joined the school a year ago.

He flies to and from Stansted at the start and finish of each term and says: ‘My parents liked it because it is small, friendly and cheaper than English private schools.’