College Pierre et Marie Curie
Situated just across the river from St Germain en Laye, in Le Pecq, the Collège Pierre et Marie Curie is a state funded 11-15 school for boys and girls. Entirely rebuilt in 1998, it is a modern, intelligently functional, immaculately maintained building. There are five hundred students altogether in the collège. Of these, one hundred and thirty five are in the British Section. The school also has a Portuguese Section of some eighty students.
The British Section has been present in the collège since 1981. We run two classes per year year group from 6ème to 3ème, providing 4 hours of English Language and Literature and 2 of History in English. The rest of the curriculum is delivered in French by teachers of the Education Nationale. A specificity of the British Section in this collège is the existence of classes at two distinct levels: Group 1, which caters for national level, entirely bilingual students, and Group 2, which concerns French children taking English as a second language.
The collège runs a vigorous exchange programme, which includes annual visits to the UK, to Spain and to Germany, as well as field trips to the Auvergne and a theatre week on the Isle of Wight. The staff is enthusiastic, dynamic and sensitive to the needs of ‘international’ students.
The collège has a thriving library, a significant part of which is English language and run by a British Section librarian.
Close contact between the Section and the Collège is maintained through a site coordinator, who is responsible for the day to day running of the section in the Collège, for pastoral support to students and for communication with parents and with the other British Section sites. A member of the Section administrative staff is present in the Collège on three mornings per week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and can be reached at (0033) 01 39 76 85 93.
Roger Stephens