In order to set off the entire French Education Abroad Network, a French High Schools Abroad Week has been organized yearly since 2017 by the AEFE (the Agency for French Education Abroad). This 12 months, the attention week occurs from November 27 to December 2 and embraces the theme Learn, Commit, Enjoy: sports activities for everybody.

France is the nation with the largest, most well-structured training community overseas, in 2023, a robust French presence is registered in 138 international locations, with 580 colleges and 391 000 college students going to highschool from kindergarten to highschool. The French Education Abroad Network is made from main, secondary and excessive colleges, all of which licensed by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The ministry relays that the speed of scholars acquiring the baccalauréat fluctuates between 95% and 99% relying on the 12 months and specifies that among the many college students “more than half are from the host country, 40% are French and 10% come from other countries”.

Key contributors to French exterior motion

The AEFE says that the primary focus of those French High School Weeks, organized yearly, is to have French training unfold to be able to “get stronger, to be nurtured and known in France as well as outside of France”. The level is to rally round “the ambition to develop French education abroad”, because the President emphasised in 2018, even wishing to double the variety of college students attending these colleges by 2030.

The Ministry of Education factors that the French Education Abroad Network, uniquely widespread and dense, is “one of the main participants ensuring French external action”. Indeed, yearly, the community grows larger, “more and more French families are living abroad, families from the host countries as well as families from other countries want to benefit from the network”. Understandably so says the Ministry of Education, this community owes its success to “the quality of the courses offered, partly adapted to the culture of the host countries where the institutions are located”, and to “the reputation of the French educational model, as well as to the performance of its students from all nationalities and its consistency on a global scale”.

A key second on this 12 months devoted to sports activities

It is amid this context of growth and this concentrate on sports activities that the French High Schools Abroad Week seventh version will happen, it is among the milestones of this 12 months devoted to sport, on the eve of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic video games.

Learn, Commit, Enjoy: sports activities for everybody, it’s exactly this 12 months’s theme, it participates to a bigger development. The AEFE explains that sports activities are “a guiding thread within the French Education Abroad Network for the whole 2023-2024 school year”. In reference to “Olympic values such as excellence, friendship, respect, fairness and courage”, the AEFE needs to “embrace the educative heritage of the Olympics” and use it to “strengthen durably the sport promoting policies in the French institutions abroad”. Therefore, after the National Day of Sport at School, which came about final September, an event to rally round selling sports activities for everybody, the brand new French High Schools Abroad Week, ought to be a key second on this 12 months devoted to sport.

In the spirit of inclusion

In concrete phrases, the AEFE works alongside three fundamental information traces to spearhead its actions throughout this week, information traces straight impressed by the theme of the week:

• Learn: bodily training and sports activities in school permit college students to amass expertise and particular data, it fosters “the acquisition of cross-disciplinary skills, a key factor to succeed, central to learning civic values”.
• Commit: in accordance with the AEFE, the verb “calls for the obvious commitment any athlete must exert in their practice, through values such as effort, determination and        perseverance”. It additionally focuses on “the beneficial aspect of commitment for the group”, permitting every and everybody “to handle social responsibilities, to experience cohesion and implication as part of a project, thus making civic values come to life”.
• Enjoy: seen as a key part to a wholesome and fulfilling life, the AEFE assures “sport fosters harmonious growth and allows the experience of thrilling moments”.

Finally, quoting the slogan Sports for everybody, the company insists that “it is all in the spirit of inclusion that the practice of sports is envisioned throughout the French Education Abroad Network, for kids of all ages, girls and boys, each and every student however different they are”. A narrative map of events programmed within the colleges all through the world is offered on the web site.