Welcome
TO THE ANGLOPHONE SECTION OF FONTAINEBLEAU
The Anglophone Section was created in 1979 by official decree of the French Ministry of Education to facilitate the integration of foreign students into the French education system and to give French students the opportunity to strengthen their command of English.
We are committed to academic excellence. As one of the very first International Sections in France, the Anglophone Section has offered the OIB (Option International du Baccalauréat) since the creation of this exam in 1981. As the OIB evolves to become the BFI (Baccalauréat Français International) we will continue preparing our studnets for this highly demanding flagship examination offered by the French Ministry of Education and moderated by Cambridge International Examinations.
Each year we host one of the biggest OIB/BFI exam centres right here on the campus with its 24 visiting examiners and 200 students from 6 schools. We have also recently acquired the status of Cambridge training centre for iGCSE teachers and examiners.
Although part of the French state system, the Anglophone Section is a fee-paying section, run by a non-profit making association, the Association des Parents d’Élèves de la Section Anglophone and governed by a Parents’ Board.
The Anglophone Section operates like a faculty within the three French state schools on the International Campus
With over 470 Anglophone students from more than 30 different nationalities, the International Anglophone Section operates like a faculty within three French public schools:
- The Ecole Internationale Léonard de Vinci (students 6 to 10 years old )
- The Collège International de Fontainebleau (students 11 to 14 years old)
- The Lycée International François Premier (students 15 to 18 years old)
Shaun Corrigan is the Head and Ruth Anne Kendrick is the Deputy Head of the Anglophone Section across all three schools. They work closely with the Primary school’s Directrice, the Collège’s Principal, the Lycée’s Proviseur as well as with the Head of the Germanophone Section, the other International Section on the campus.
The Anglophone Section is completely integrated into the French host schools. Any child accepted into the Section is, first and foremost, a student in the Primary school, the Collège or the Lycée. They must obey the same rules and follow the same procedures as all the other French students. Section students spend a certain number of hours of the school week with English native teachers: six hours in Primary, six hours in Collège studying Language & Literature and History-Geography and six to nine hours in Lycée continuing the same subjects. The rest of their time they attend class in subjects taught by French native teachers.
The defining feature of students in the Section is not nationality but linguistic standard. The profile of children in the Section includes those from English-speaking families, bilingual families and those who have learned English as a second or foreign language and are committed to developing it at first-language level.
The Anglophone Section of Fontainebleau is part of ASIBA (Association des Sections Internationales Britanniques et Anglophones), ECIS (Education Collaborative for International Schools) and ELSA (English Language Schools Association).
The Anglophone Section aims
★ To ensure that each child fulfills his or her potential in the Anglophone subjects and activities
★ To promote the pleasures and values associated with intellectual curiosity, creativity and learning
★ To develop the highest possible standard of competence in written and spoken English
★ To create, maintain and strengthen knowledge and understanding of the Anglophone culture, past and present
★ To ensure compatibility of the education provided with potential integration of the students into Anglophone educational systems
★ To facilitate the students social and moral development and mutual understanding and tolerance within a multicultural framework
★ To generate, manage and employ financial revenues sufficient to ensure the optimal development of educational resources: within the limit laid down in the Statutes and confines of the French educational system while maintaining fees, as far as possible, within the reach of potential candidate families
★ To positively facilitate the integration of Section students into the French educational and cultural system
Our aims are summed up in our motto: Sharing Cultures, Nurturing Confidence, Building Futures
The new Baccalauréat 2021
The reform of the Bac will enable students to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the subjects that most interest them during the final two years of schooling by creating Special Subjects (Spécialités) to which more curricular time will be devoted. In order to maintain the broad humanistic education that is so admired by foreign universities and employers alike, and which contributes to students becoming such well-rounded and engaging individuals, the new Baccalauréat will also allow all students to continue to study a core curriculum that includes French Literature, Science, two foreign languages, History-Geography and Philosophy, regardless of which subjects they choose to specialise in. This is made possible by the introduction of ‘continuous assessment’ (contrôle continu) in core subjects whereby a combination of results from three end-of-unit tests in each subject and marks registered by teachers in the termly bulletins will replace final examinations.
The subjects taught by the Section maintain their central place in the new-look baccalauréat. Indeed, English Language and Literature and History-Geography will continue to be taught and examined alongside the Special Subjects enabling British and anglophone universities to continue to recognise our students’ particularly strong aptitude to study there.
OIB vs. A levels
How does the OIB compare with A levels?
The OIB is more demanding as a test of language than A-level English (with no oral component) as students are required not only to write fluent and accurate English in the written paper but, in the oral, to give a presentation on Shakespeare and to engage in a discussion of a collection of texts with two examiners for thirty minutes.
Secondly, the OIB places more emphasis on contextual and comparative study than in A-level Literature. The OIB has a narrower and, some might argue, a more traditional literary focus.
A third difference is that the OIB has a compulsory Critical Appreciation section in the written paper, where students have to write an essay on a poem or passage of prose that they have not seen before. Unseen practical criticism used to be a feature of A level English too, but has largely been dropped. This emphasis on close reading in the OIB exam is one of its great strengths.
Finally, most importantly, in the OIB the teachers themselves act as examiners, both for the written and the oral examinations. They are therefore actively involved in every part of the process: proposing questions for the exam papers, teaching students, preparing them for the exam and then act as examiners for other than their own students.