by 
By : Flavie, France
In France, school begins when you are children ; like USA, there are different types of school : for the little children there are ‘école maternelle’– it’s the preschool for you. After , there is ‘école élémentaire’ or the elementary school and after it’s a little bit different– we have the ‘ college’. It looks like middle school but the age is not the same ; in France we enter the middle school when we are 11 years old and we finish at 14 years. In United States of America, the middle school length is 3 years. And for the ‘lycée’ or the high school, we have just 3 years. But the French high school is composed by : «la seconde » or the 10th grade. This is a general classroom and after is « première » or 11th grade (we are in speciality). There are 3 specialities : L, ES or S. L is for Literature, ES for Economy and social, S for Sciences. In 10th grade we take our first part of ‘Baccalauréat’ or Bac. The first part is constituted by 4 disciplines :
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L
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ES
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S
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Written French
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Oral French
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Sciences
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History and Geography
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TPE (Supervised Personal Work)
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And after the 11th grade, we have the last classroom, the ‘Terminal’ or the 12th grade. We pass the 2nd part of Bac with our last disciplines :
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L
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ES
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S
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Sport
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Philosophy
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Litterature
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Economy and Social
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Physics
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History and Geography
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Biology
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Written and Oral English (or German) LV1*
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Written and Oral Spanish (or German, or English) LV2**
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Music or Arts
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Maths
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Summary :
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Old
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3
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4
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5
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6
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7
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8
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9
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10
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11
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12
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13
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14
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15
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16
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17
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USA
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Preschool
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Elementary school (1st grade – 5th)
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Middle school (6th – 8th)
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High school (9th – 12th)
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France
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Ecole maternelle
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Ecole élémentaire (CP au CM2)
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Collège (6ieme à la 3ième)
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Lycée (2nd à la Terminale)
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Typical day in French High School :
In France, we generally start classes at 8am, and our courses last 55 min each. In terms of the schedule, it remains the same throughout the school year and school year lasts 3 quarters. We usually work 5 days out of 7, Monday through Friday and sometimes until Saturday morning for some schools. Our days last approximately 7 hours (of classes) excluding the lunch hour. So our days consist of 2 consecutive hours, 15 min break, then another 2 hours. After one to two hour break for lunch, we start as in the morning.
The lunch break we eat in a “self” (like a cafeteria) and we have access by a card with money in it to pay the meal (about € 3.50 a meal). Our meals consist of a starter, main course, cheese, fruit and yogurt.
In 2nd (10th) we must take a mandatory option (you have the choice between arts, music, Latin, Ancient Greek, LV3, Literature and Society …) and for the 1ère (11th) we have the choice of either continuing this option, stop it, or even take another. You should know that these options give us bonus points for our tray (you can get 30 more points with that). In Terminal you must choose a specialty ; in my section I had a choice between math, political science or eco depth (I chose special math, because it is easier). For the Bac, these options are added in our tests. That is to say that for my math test I have one more speciality maths’s exercise, which is the same for those who have taken political science(they will have one more exercise–1 hour more).
How does Bac Exams work?
In the Terminals (12th) we stop school in June because we have a revision period to complete the exam. We review all of our disiplines (all lessons). Then we have to go to different events, each lasts 4 hours except oral language tests (which lasts about 20 minutes), where we present a document and discuss it with juries who evaluate us.
Questions? Comments? Leave them in the section below!