A qualification that carries lead in the band. The prestigious French Lycée Charles-de-Gaulle in Kensington in London has received the worst possible rating from Ofsted, the British school service, reveals France Info on Thursday. This announcement arouses concern and misunderstanding within the establishment whose tuition fees go up to 10,000 euros per year.
The high school, which offers a bilingual curriculum, receives 3,450 students in its different establishments. If you pride yourself on having a 100% success rate in high school, your teaching is questioned.
A lack of pedagogy in question
Published last January, the British report attributes the assessment of “insufficient” to the establishment, that is, the worst possible. Only 8% of secondary schools in the UK do poorly.
In question? The methodology, mainly. In fact, if the report underlines that Charles-de-Gaulle High School shows a high level of academic requirements, it points to its lack of pedagogy.
“Teachers do not systematically check that students have fully understood what they are taught,” laments the note.
The report also considers that the establishment also has deficiencies in non-school issues. “Officials do not alert official agencies fast enough when child protection violations occur,” Ofsted said.
“How did we get to this?”
Among parents of French high school students, the announcement did not go unnoticed. “It was astonishment, disbelief, a bit of anger too, because we asked ourselves: how could we have come to this?”, the vice-president of the association of parents of Pascale Guely students admits to France Info.
Especially since a bad grade can have concrete consequences for the future of the establishment. “Immediately, we thought about the image, about the possible loss of students that could derive from it, about the registration fees”, emphasizes the president of the association Karen Bargues.
On the London secondary school’s management side, the headmaster hardly acknowledges a “gap with English standards” on the issue of child protection. The director defends himself by evoking a delay in the application within his institute of the new British laws, dating from 2019, on the subject.
“It’s a disappointment, but now we are in the moment of action,” says the school, which says it is considering an audit.
Source: BFM TV
