The network of French schools abroad, the "lycées français", has 640 accredited schools in 140 countries and more than 400,000 pupils, according to the AEFE, the French government agency that oversees it. Two pupils in three are not French. For a family about to move, the number is reassuring: there will be a French school almost everywhere. What it hides matters more. Those 640 schools do not share the same legal status, the same fees or the same guarantees.
Other pages on this blog cover individual cities and procedures. This one is for the overall decision, taken in the order I take it with families: what you are actually buying, the real cost over the whole of secondary school, the network versus an international school, and finally the move back.
A network that has changed in ten years
Most parents picture a state-run school staffed by tenured teachers seconded from France. That model exists in 68 schools, the ones run directly by the AEFE. The French Senate's report on French education abroad, published in July 2026, describes a different network overall. "Partner" schools, private schools accredited by the French Ministry of Education that hire their own teachers, now make up 62% of the network and teach more than half of its pupils. All recent growth has come from them: 142 newly accredited schools and 330 extensions of accreditation, while the historic network, in the AEFE's own words as quoted by the senators, "practically did not contribute" to the increase.
The same report notes that on average 80% of pupils in partner schools are not French. In practice, two schools that both call themselves "the French lycée" in the same city can be very different: one a quasi-public school where French nationality gives priority, the other a private school whose main clientele is local and whose admission rules are its own. I check each school's status in the AEFE directory before reading its brochure. The three statuses and what they change for admissions are set out in enrolling in a French school abroad.
From €4,400 to €46,000 for the same baccalauréat
The Senate gives the network's average tuition, €6,157 a year in 2024, and its range: from €71 in Madagascar to €43,336 in the United States. The average says little about what an expatriate family will pay, because the cities where executives are posted sit almost entirely at the top of the distribution. I took the official 2026-2027 fee schedules of nine schools for seconde, the first year of French upper secondary (Year 11 in England, 10th grade in the US).
A ratio of one to ten between Casablanca and Manhattan, for pupils who sit the same exam papers on the same day: that is the first thing I show a family facing a string of postings. According to the breakdown in the Senate report for 2024-2025, 55% of schools charge under €5,000 and only 16% charge over €10,000. A family that paid €8,000 in Madrid and is moving to Singapore is not moving up a price band. It is tripling its bill.
Three pricing mechanisms catch families out more than the level itself. Several schools charge by nationality: in Casablanca, Lycée Lyautey bills a French pupil 48,200 dirhams and others 60,700; in Bangkok the gap is 20 to 26%. Some ask for capital on top of tuition, such as the French International School of Hong Kong, whose private debenture is HKD 120,000, about €13,600. And fees are now rising faster, for budgetary reasons explained in the box below. When I build a budget with a family, it covers every planned year of lycée, never just the year of arrival.
Example: the 2026 school year across the network.
After two years of cuts to its state subsidy, €52 million in total according to the Senate, the AEFE's board voted in December 2025 for an emergency extra contribution from schools. In September 2026 this meant fee rises averaging 7% in directly run and "conventionné" (state-contracted) schools, and up to 18% in some. The share of that contribution borne by directly run schools is due to rise from 35% to 50% in 2027, and the senators write that the increases "could continue".
At the 2026 baccalauréat, the network's pass rate was 98.8% across 23,223 candidates, with 83.3% of pupils awarded a mention (honours) and 27.3% a mention très bien, the highest grade band, according to AEFE figures reported by lepetitjournal.com.
Sources: French Senate, information report no. 829 on French education abroad, 1 July 2026; AEFE.
What accreditation guarantees, and what it doesn't
Accreditation ("homologation") is granted by the French Ministry of Education stage by stage (primary, middle school, upper secondary) for five renewable years, under a decree of 2 July 2025. It guarantees three things a family needs. The pupil follows the French curriculum and sits French exams. They can move to another school, in the network or in France, without an entrance exam. And French families can apply for a French government school grant, which is only paid for an accredited class.
It guarantees nothing else, and this is where families most often go wrong. It does not necessarily cover every year group: a school can have an accredited primary and an unaccredited middle school, as on the new Jean-Mermoz South campus in Dubai, which I flag in French schools in Dubai. It says nothing about how many teachers are tenured French teachers. It does not promise that the school runs to the final year. And a school that prepares the French bac is not always accredited: in Geneva several private schools are accredited only for the last two years, and Institut Florimont did not appear in the AEFE directory when I checked, as explained in French schools in Geneva.
The senators add a point no brochure mentions. The same inspector can help a school towards accreditation and then check that it meets the criteria, and the report refers to accreditations granted "too quickly" given the teaching quality. A new school can be excellent. But a recent accreditation, in a network that has added 142 schools in a few years, does not replace a visit, the school's own results at the brevet (the exam at the end of middle school) and the bac, and a conversation with parents in the year group you are applying for.
The network or an international school: what tips the balance
Quality rarely separates the two. In most large cities there is a good French lycée and a good international school. What decides is what comes next. According to the AEFE, 53% of the network's graduates continue their studies in France, even though two pupils in three are not French. The network is built for that return; the international school is built for mobility.
The French network wins
- A likely return to France before or after the bac, with a prépa (the two-year course leading to the grandes écoles) or Parcoursup (France's university application platform) in view.
- Possible next postings in cities with an accredited French school up to the final year.
- A child who already writes French at the level of their year group.
The international school wins
- Repeated postings to cities where the network stops at primary or does not exist.
- A teenager arriving with no written French, at 13 or older.
- University plans in the UK, the US or elsewhere, with no return to France.
The teenager arriving without French is the case where I am most categorical. On English-speaking expat parents' forums such as Mumsnet, the advice that keeps coming back is not to put a non-French-speaking teenager straight into a French lycée, and teachers at international schools who reply point out that their schools are designed for pupils who stay two years and move on. The network is often closed to that profile late in secondary school anyway: several schools do not admit pupils from outside the French system into the last two years, Lycée Charles de Gaulle among them, as described in the London lycée's admissions.
When both columns fill up, I look for a school that lets the decision wait. In New York that is the case for FASNY, where the French bac and the IB run under one roof, compared in FASNY or the Lycée Français. Elsewhere it is often the international section of the French school, which leads to the French international baccalaureate, the BFI. The BFI-or-IB choice comes at around fifteen, and it shapes what follows more than the name of the school.
The mistakes I see in city after city
Confusing a French-language school with an accredited lycée. On an expat.com thread about Dubai, a forum member points this out to a mother arriving with three children: French-language schools are "private schools with a few French-speaking teachers", while the lycée follows the French national curriculum. The AEFE directory settles it in two minutes. The city-wide choice between curricula is in choosing a school in Dubai.
Learning of the posting in spring. In the same thread, the family hears of the move after the autumn admissions round and ends up on several French schools' waiting lists at once. The most sought-after schools fill a large share of their places before Christmas. If a September move is likely, I advise applying in the autumn with the previous year's reports, without waiting for the posting to be signed: an application is easier to withdraw than a place is to recover.
Choosing a primary school without checking where it ends. In London only three accredited French schools run to the bac, and most of the others stop at age eleven, so the family is unknowingly signing up for a second application a few years later, as shown in French schools in London.
Choosing housing before the school. In Madrid, Lycée Molière is in Villanueva de la Cañada, outside the city, and the Lycée Français makes you choose your campus on the application form (see the Lycée Français de Madrid). Around Geneva, your address even decides which country your child goes to school in.
Reading the lack of a deadline as a lack of competition. The Lycée Français de New York publishes no deadline beyond kindergarten, but its places depend on departures in each grade; its own page covers the exam required of children from unaccredited schools.
Assuming there will be a French school up to the bac everywhere. In Bangkok, only one accredited school goes beyond kindergarten, the LFIB, which reduces the whole choice to its English pathway and its entrance test, described in the French school in Bangkok.
The way back starts on the way out
A pupil at an accredited school applies through Parcoursup exactly like a pupil in Lyon. What differs is how selection panels that do not know the school read the file, and where an unaccompanied seventeen-year-old will live. For a prépa, boarding is requested together with the application and its availability varies enormously from one class to another; that is the first figure I check in getting into a prépa from a French school abroad. For schools that recruit straight after the bac, almost every entrance exam can be taken abroad, on Paris time; the options are compared in a grande école from a French school abroad.
The timing of the return matters as much as the file. I advise against moving back for the final year when it can be avoided: the teachers who write the "fiche Avenir", the school's report attached to every Parcoursup application, will have known the pupil for three months. Returning for seconde, or finishing in the network, makes a clearer file. How the platform works and where returning families trip up is in Parcoursup for returning expats.
One last point, often forgotten by families who leave the network midway: years spent outside accredited schools, even at an excellent international school, mean that on return the receiving school assesses the pupil and decides the year group. One more reason to keep accreditation for the years before a likely return.
The order in which I make these decisions
First, the likely path after the bac, even if uncertain, because it decides between the network and an international school. Then the number of moves ahead and the possible cities, checked in the AEFE directory year group by year group. Then the budget over the whole of secondary school, including registration fees, capital contributions and rises. Last, the school itself, the application and the local calendar, which never look the same from one country to the next.
At Carmine, we work with around twenty families a year, often across two or three countries in succession: choosing the school, running several admissions calendars in parallel, and preparing French and maths entrance tests for children coming from another system. Our school admissions page describes how we work.