Lycée Francais de Charles de Gaulle de Londres Reviews (5)

An absolutely awful place to work as a Teacher. They throw you in a classroom mixed of students from all different levels, and expect you to teach them all in one class! There is no support or care given to new staff and I can honestly say it was the worst teaching experience I have ever had. I feel sorry for the students that go here.

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An elitist school that I finished my studies at 2 years ago that I certainly don’t miss. Apart from the amazing location and the range of people you meet, there is not much to justify its reputation. There is a minority of really good teachers but a good portion of them are arrogant, aggressive, unprofessional and keep on bringing students down. Parents and students who are not Madonna’s children have absolutely no voice and the school management will harshly dismiss any complaints and try to hold onto status-quo for as long as they possibly can. Management runs the school in an authoritarian way and there are almost no democratic improvement systems. The curriculum puts extreme pressure on students by constantly grading them (even in PE lessons which are spent on buses to external facilities and sitting on the side of the court to talk about how the sport exam will be graded) Most of the time students who struggle will receive no support. Priority is only given to solo performance in exams and almost never to self development, community building or the personal fulfilment. There is very little importance given to creative subjects: art facilities are minuscule, there are 0 technicians and art students suffer from a degraded academic image that is constantly being reinforced. The rest of the school facilities are quite appalling too: during my 4 years there I have never seen the windows being washed, there rarely was soap in toilets and degraded buildings were never fixed. The teachers' room features the latest Nespresso coffee machines, lounging areas, brand new computers and resembles a 1st class airport lounge while the “foyer” space allocated for 900 secondary school students is the size of a 1 bedroom apartment, has no heating, features a coffee machine that has always been broken and the cheapest couches found 2nd hand at IKEA. IT services are non-existent and none of the available tech functions properly: how are students in this day and age supposed to learn in this environment? When it comes to school days, they were broken down into a succession of interminable lessons, very short breaks and the school police called “surveillants” shouting at students and leaving them with no freedom. I did not witness physical bullying which seems to have ended but psychological bullying is still very much present and nothing is done. LGBT+ students in particular suffer from a prejudiced environment. Students who don’t fit physical norms are also left alone. The school has a psychologist but I have never seen anyone receiving meaningful help from them. Don’t be fooled by their misleading open days (students who you meet there will have been carefully briefed on what to say), or by their academic stats: they are taking credit for the success of their students which in my opinion is only linked to their educated and wealthy family backgrounds rather than any of what the school does. Will never send my kids there, especially for secondary school.

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