France · Yvelines
This is a state cité scolaire, not a hors-contrat boutique. Every child is in an international section. Places in a national section are the scarce thing. French-state tuition is not a private-school invoice.
Questo ritratto è ancora in inglese. Le altre lingue arrivano scuola per scuola.
Curricolo come lo pubblica la scuola:French national curriculum · Baccalauréat Français International (BFI) via fourteen international sections
Lingue di istruzione:French plus the language of the child’s international section
The Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye is a public cité scolaire in the Académie de Versailles, UAI 0783549J. The address is 2 bis rue du Fer à Cheval, 78105 Saint-Germain-en-Laye Cedex. The proviseur named on the académie listing and on the school’s own welcome is Philippe Bonneville.
It is not a fee-charging independent in the English sense. French-state tuition is not a private-school invoice. What you compete for is a seat in one of fourteen international sections. The homepage and the proviseur’s letter say the same unusual sentence: this is the only establishment in France, and in the network of French schools abroad, that teaches only in international sections. Every pupil, the school says, sits the Baccalauréat Français International (BFI) in one of those fourteen sections.
The académie snapshot for the lycée only, rentrée 2024, is 1,057 pupils: 366 in 2nde, 344 in 1ère, 347 in Terminale. That is not a maternelle-to-Terminale headcount. The homepage counters did not print usable numbers on the fetch. Treat 1,057 as the lycée’s official rentrée figure, not the size of the whole cité.
The useful questions are not “is it prestigious.” The useful questions are: Which section is this child actually bilingual in? Can they sit a language exam in March and still be themselves in French on a Tuesday? Do you understand that you apply to the section first, not to a generic “international lycée” form? And have you asked that section — not a forum — what complementary association fee it charges this year?
The admissions page is unusually clear. The lycée is not sectorized. Every child on the cité follows the French national curriculum and a section. The fourteen sections take children of foreign families living in France, binational children, French children who have spent part of their schooling in the section’s country, and, more generally, children who can show a sufficient level in the section language.
That last clause is the gate. A section is not a language club. The school’s own explainer says an international section teaches the partner language at mother-tongue level, plus the literature and the history of that country, with native-speaker teachers trained in the partner system. It is not a section européenne.
Français spécial exists for children who arrive with little or no French. The German-section page says those classes run from CE1 to 2nde, with about 12 hours of French a week and a timetable built to fold the child into an ordinary class the following year. The American Section says pupils aged 7–15 who do not speak French may apply to that immersion year. The admissions page says the same test logic applies if you want Français spécial: start with the section.
This is a day school. There is no boarding house on the Fer à Cheval campus to absorb a posting that has not found a flat. The académie notes the RER A to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, then about a quarter of an hour on bus R2. If you live in Paris, that commute is the Tuesday.
The homepage offers a virtual walk of seven buildings: the château, the Agora, the Atrium, the Scherer building, the maternelle, the élémentaire, and the gymnasium. That is more useful than a brochure photograph of a gate. Ask to see the section rooms — the ones where literature and history happen in the partner language — and an ordinary French classroom, not only the château courtyard.
The cité runs from grande section de maternelle through Terminale. The proviseur’s letter says children from grande section to Terminale gather several hours a week in their section, and that this is how “the great family” of the lycée is made: each section keeps its culture and its standards, inside a French parcours.
Rentrée 2026/27, from the school’s own organisation page: full-time pupils return Tuesday 1 September 2026. The full-time inscription dossier is brought on the welcome day of 29 August 2026. Externés start from Monday 7 September 2026. Confirm those dates on the live page; rentrée letters move.
Think in two layers, every year.
The French layer is the national curriculum: the same subjects, the same bac specialties the académie lists — mathematics, physics-chemistry, SVT, HGGSP, SES, HLP, complementary and expert maths, NSI, theatre, visual arts, music, connaissances du monde. Latin is offered. The académie table is a lycée options list, not a promise that your child will be in every room.
The section layer is several hours a week in the partner language: language and literature, and history-geography (or, in the Chinese section, mathematics instead of the specific history-geography option). The BFI explainer on the school site says those programmes are the fruit of an intergovernmental agreement with the partner country. BFI exams in the section subjects are sat in the language of the section, except that the written history-geography paper may be in French.
The fourteen sections named on the admissions contact table are:
The académie “langue de section” list matches that set and writes Américain as well as Anglais — the American and British sections are not the same door. Do not apply to the wrong English.
French is the language of the établissement. The section language is the language of the scarce seat. The admissions page says the IA-DASEN admits on the head’s proposal after a dossier and a language exam: oral and/or written in elementary, according to age; written and oral in collège and lycée. Every procedure begins with tests organised by the section.
Read that twice. You do not start at the vie scolaire office with a catchment certificate. You start with an email to the section secretariat in the table on the admissions page.
Two official section pages show what “sufficient level” means in practice.
The German section wants children who are bilingual, with very good German; reports are read; tests are in spring; the proviseur decides. Applications open from the December before entry, to secretariat@deutsche-abteilung.de. Dossier fees are €120 per child. Files are generally back in February; exact dates live on deutsche-abteilung.de.
The American Section wants native or near-native English and an affinity with American culture. Teachers are English mother-tongue, educated in North America. The section says more than 50 nationalities sit in those rooms, and that the common denominator is fluent, age-appropriate English. Apart from the youngest (moyenne section–CE1 / Pre-K–2nd) and Français spécial, most decisions are on file. Favourable recommendations go to the proviseur. Applications go in December and January for the following September. Dates live on americansection.org.
Other sections will have their own calendars, their own tests, their own association invoices. We are not inventing those figures. Write to the address in the school’s table.
For lycée pupils, the DSDEN des Yvelines publishes a sheet on what to do if Affelnet or an assignment goes wrong. The school links it from the admissions page. If you are entering 2nde from a private collège, or from abroad, read that sheet before you argue with a forum.
There is no published “open enrolment” sentence of the VIS kind. There is no OpenApply for the whole cité. A British-section child and a Japanese-section child are not in the same queue.
Grade placement follows the French niveau. The cité includes maternelle and élémentaire; a family arriving for CE2 is still a section conversation, not a town-hall catchment conversation.
There is no Paris-style annual tuition PDF. The académie listing does not print a private fee. Families still pay what French public schools charge for lunch, fournitures, and trips, and they still pay whatever their section association invoices.
The only section dossier figure we extracted from an official section page in this pass is the German section’s €120 per child. Other sections almost certainly charge something. Ask the secretariat in the table. Do not reuse a 2019 blog.
The school publishes fournitures lists for primary and for collège 6ème–3ème for 2026/27. Those are supply lists, not tuition.
If an employer is used to writing a €30,000 cheque to an IB day school, they will not recognise this invoice. That is not a hidden bargain. It is a different legal object: a state lycée with a bilingual overload, and a section association that has to pay native-speaker hours the state does not fully cover. Get the association’s current schedule in writing.
The leaving diploma the school names for every pupil is the BFI — the Baccalauréat Français International — in the child’s section. It is a French baccalaureate, with section papers set under the intergovernmental agreement. It is not the IB Diploma. This cité does not sell an IB pathway on the pages we fetched.
The académie table prints bac général results: 100.0% in 2022, 99.7% in 2023. For 2024 the rate is marked EAD (awaiting publication) with 335 candidates present. That is the académie talking, for the lycée cohort, not a promise about your child.
The German-section news on the school site notes DSD II certificates presented at the German Embassy in May 2026. That is a German-language extra, not a second baccalaureate. Ask your section what partner certificates sit beside the BFI this year.
If you might later need a document that looks like a national leaving certificate of the partner country, ask the section — not a parent WhatsApp — whether the BFI is accepted as that country’s diploma, or only as a French baccalaureate with a strong language. They are not the same sentence.
Français spécial is the published on-ramp for little or no French, inside the section’s world. It is a year of heavy French, then a bilingual class. It is not a specialist SEN school. The admissions page does not publish a learning-support menu. Bring the current reports to the section, then to the cité, and ask whether both can staff what the child actually needs.
A child who is fluent in French and weak in the section language is not a Français spécial candidate. They are a “maybe not this section” candidate. That is a harder conversation, and it is better had in December than in June.
Ask which of the fourteen doors this child can actually walk through in March. Ask to sit in on a section literature hour and a French maths hour. Ask how many hours the section is, in this grade, this year. Ask whether Français spécial is open at this age, and what the child does for the rest of the timetable. Ask the association fee in writing. Ask how the R2 / RER A Tuesday works in January. Ask what happens if the posting ends in March (this is a public inscription, not a private contract with a two-month clause). Ask the DSDEN sheet question if you are entering lycée from outside Affelnet.
If you might stay in France, ask Parcoursup in the same breath as the BFI. If you will leave for the partner country, ask whether that country treats this BFI as home.
We are not saying this is the best public lycée in the académie. We are not guessing a section waitlist. We are not inventing fourteen association fee tables. We are not treating the homepage’s animated counters as a census. Combined maternelle–Terminale headcount is not on the académie lycée listing.
Read the admissions page and write to the section in that table before you resign a flat in another département. This is a map. The cité still has to be the right Tuesday.
Pagine e documenti ufficiali che abbiamo letto. Se un numero conta per il bilancio o la domanda, aprite il link e controllate che sia ancora valido.
Orientamento amichevole, non una domanda. Date, rette e programmi si muovono. Confermate tutto con la scuola.
The useful Paris map is often a western suburb, a bilingual house in the 15th, or a public cité scolaire of sections. Time the RER at the hour you would actually travel.
15 minLe lettere sul diploma contano. Non sono tutto il ragazzo. Ecco come distinguerle senza mal di testa, e senza fingere che ogni porta resti aperta.
16 minNon vi serve un algoritmo perfetto. Vi servono poche cose vere su vostro figlio, una lista un po’ noiosa sul frigo, e il coraggio di ignorare un bel campus che non vi sta.
15 minLa retta è il numero in homepage. Il PDF è quello che arriva a marzo. Ecco come leggere il secondo, senza inventare un euro, una corona o una scadenza.