France · Paris
The Paris houses are day schools sous contrat. The IB invoice is a different animal from the French lycée. Boarding lives in Lille. Read the fee PDF that matches the pathway before you fall in love with the bilingual story.
Curriculum as published:French national curriculum (sous contrat) with the school’s own English, science and Chinese · Baccalauréat Français International (BFI) · IB Diploma from 11th grade · École Jeannine Manuel High School Diploma
Languages of instruction:French, English
École Jeannine Manuel is a French bilingual day school on three sites in the 15th arrondissement. It has been sous contrat with the French state for more than sixty years, which is the sentence that changes the bill. The school follows the national curriculum except for its own English, science and Chinese programmes. Instruction is French and English. The leaving years split: the Baccalauréat Français International (BFI) or the IB Diploma. A school High School Diploma is awarded as well.
Founded in 1954. The mission line has not moved: international understanding through a bilingual education. The about page and the 2023–24 school profile both say students of more than 80 nationalities across Paris, Lille and London. The profile prints more than 2,400 pupils in Paris, 1,000 in Lille, 600 in London. The campuses page, written later, says the Marcq-en-Barœul house welcomes 975. The boarding page says more than 880 on that campus and 120 boarders. Treat those as the school’s own snapshots, not a census we counted.
Paris does not board. The FAQ is blunt. Boarding starts in 6ème at Lille. If you are choosing a 15th-arrondissement Tuesday, you are choosing a day school and a walk, a métro, or a car between Suffren, Dupleix and Rue du Théâtre.
The useful questions are not “is it the first lycée in France.” The useful questions are: Can this child live in two languages at once? Do you want the French baccalaureate route or the IB invoice? Can you pay first-time registration as well as tuition? And if the child has almost no French, do you understand the Adaptation year — which is a third number on a different PDF.
The school says it looks for children who can benefit from an enriched bilingual curriculum, and for parents who are committed to the mission. The FAQ adds the kitchen-table version: it is highly oversubscribed. Places go on academic profile, the ability to cope with the bilingual load, and a contribution to cultural diversity. Among equally qualified files, the published order is sister-school children and siblings, children of alumni and staff, extra-curricular interests, then “other factors.” The school also says it tries to keep room for international families on a short posting — visiting professors, research fellows — who need immersion and a way back into their home system.
Main Paris entries are Pre-K (Moyenne Section), Kindergarten, 1st, 6ème and 2nde. Other grades open when someone leaves. There is no new entry into Terminale / 12th. BFI and IB are two-year programmes; the school will not take a child for the last year only.
Paris starts at age 4 (Moyenne Section). Lille takes Petite Section at age 3. There is no feeder nursery. There is no Paris school bus. There is no uniform. If you need a boarding house because the posting has not found a flat, you are looking at Lille, not the 15th.
Three Paris houses, all in the 15th.
Suffren takes Moyenne Section through CE1. Dupleix takes Grande Section through CE2. The two Rue du Théâtre houses take CE2 through Terminale; campus tours are of 70 Rue du Théâtre. The FAQ says the sites are about a 15-minute walk from one another. They open at 08:10. School starts at 08:30. You cannot drop a child before 08:10. Dupleix has a car drop-off. Primary finishes at 15:15.
Security is why the school will show you Théâtre and will not walk you through Suffren or Dupleix. There are photo galleries instead. Use them, then still ask to see an ordinary classroom on the site your child would actually attend.
Lille is a different picture: Marcq-en-Barœul, a few miles from the city, Paris–London–Brussels on the train. The boarding house is recently refurbished. The school names a 1,500 m² gym with a climbing wall, a 300 m track, a playing field. Rooms have a bathroom, a desk, storage, a bed. There is a common room, a collaborative work space, a dining hall, a housemaster on each corridor, and a trained health professional on site. That is Lille. It is not a spare bed above a Paris classroom.
Primary. 4.5 days. 08:30–15:15, except Wednesday 08:30–12:30. Lunch 11:45–13:15. The school calls this light by French standards and says it leaves room for clubs. The 2026–27 primary fee PDF prices a 4-day lunch (no Wednesday) and a 5-day lunch separately, which matches a Wednesday that ends at half-twelve.
Secondary. Lessons are 45 or 90 minutes, not the usual French 55. The school says that shortens the week by about four hours, and puts the time into projects, electives and workshops. In 8th and 9th, history is taught in both languages; Cross-Cultural Perspectives workshops put the two rooms in the same argument. Office Hours exist so a teenager can walk in without a detention slip. DEAR is Drop Everything And Read, from a list of more than 200 books.
From kindergarten through the end of middle school, the 2023–24 profile says mathematics, science, history-geography, and moral and civic education are taught in both French and English. Art, music and PE follow the teacher’s mother tongue. French and English literature stay in their own languages. French-taught subjects follow the national programmes; English-taught ones are “inspired by” UK and US practice. That is the school’s sentence. Ask what it means in this CE2 classroom, not in the brochure.
11th grade is the fork. BFI or IB. The American section of the BFI, the profile says, can include AP English Literature or Language in première, AP European History or Human Geography, and optional AP Calculus BC or Statistics in terminale. The school describes about 34 hours a week, up to 40 percent in English. The IB is the usual Diploma: six subjects, core, CAS. Both are two years. Both lock you in.
The school defines bilingualism as the ability to speak and write French or English with “native ease.” Most teachers, it says, are native in one of the two. A large part of the student body has French or English at home. That is the easy paragraph.
The hard paragraph is the child who arrives with little or no French. Adaptation runs from 2nd through 9th grade (CE2–3ème). It is immersion plus structured French, with a senior advisor watching the file. It is not the main-entry calendar. Places are allocated on a rolling basis. It has its own fee line.
Kindergarten and 1st-grade applicants must file a speech-therapist language evaluation (CELF, ELO, and the other names on the FAQ). Bilingual children still do it. A Kindergarten evaluation from last year does not carry into a CP application. Pre-K, Kindergarten and 1st-grade residents of France are invited to a playdate — small-group activities with two teachers — in French or in English.
There is no Paris EAL-in-English story of the Vienna kind. The language of the house is already two languages. A child who cannot yet live in French is an Adaptation candidate, not a quiet extra hour.
Applications run through OpenApply. Create an account. If you reapply, use “reapply”; do not invent a second family. Families are expected to attend a presentation — on campus or a live webinar, French or English — before they apply. A campus tour of Théâtre is optional.
2026–27, updated 27 August 2026: the campaign is closed and classes are full. Families living outside France may still file; complete files can go on a waiting list. The school says very few places are likely. 2027–28 opens 22 September 2026.
The 2026–27 FAQ still prints the last campaign’s dates, which is useful as a map of the rhythm: opened 22 September 2025, closed 13 January 2026 at 18:00 for families living in France, no deadline for families abroad. Application fee €350, non-refundable, per child, paid online. Decision letters mostly March–April — end of March for 1st and 6ème, mid-to-late April for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and 2nd–12th. Waiting-list families must reapply the next year. There is no published order on the list; when a seat opens, the whole list is read again.
What to upload, from the FAQ: supporting documents as soon as you have them. Pre-K by the end of March; Kindergarten speech report by mid-March; CP speech report by the end of February; 6ème by mid-February. Separated parents must file a co-signed authorisation. A parent recommendation letter is required; French or English; the school does not want a coded professional reference.
The school, not the parent, decides whether the file is Adaptation. Grade 12 from nowhere is not a conversation.
These are the school’s euro figures from the five Paris 2026–27 PDFs linked on the tuition page. They will move. Confirm the live PDF before you budget.
One-time, every new child
| Fee | 2026–27 |
|---|---|
| Application (FAQ figure for the 2026–27 campaign; non-refundable) | €350 |
| First-time registration (on every 2026–27 Paris fee PDF; not included in tuition) | €1,650 |
Registration becomes effective when the non-refundable registration fee and a deposit of one third of annual tuition have arrived. The deposit is refundable only for demonstrated force majeure, notified by registered letter with return receipt.
Annual tuition, Paris 2026–27
| Pathway | Annual tuition |
|---|---|
| Primary | €10,260 |
| Collège (middle school) | €11,185 |
| Adaptation — annual school fees | €10,260 |
| Adaptation — French-language support (extra) | €4,295 |
| Lycée BFI | €10,275 |
| IB Foundation Year | €24,865 |
| IB DP1 and DP2 | €32,560 |
The IB number is not a misprint next to the BFI number. They are different pathways. The Foundation Year is the school’s IB on-ramp; DP1 and DP2 are the Diploma years. A first-year DP child is not “about €10,000 like the French lycée.” It is registration + a third on deposit + €32,560.
Lunch, same PDFs, optional
| Plan | 2026–27 |
|---|---|
| 4-day (no Wednesday) | €1,217 |
| 5-day | €1,508 |
| Single lunch | €10 |
How you pay. Ten monthly direct debits, September to June, or three dates: 20 September, 20 December, 20 March. Late sums carry 12% annual interest from the first day. Unpaid fees can mean the child is not accepted in class. Any term started is due in full. Leave early and you give one month’s notice by registered letter; the school may discuss a partial settlement in force majeure. Families pay for damage their children cause, within thirty days of the invoice.
The Adaptation PDF adds a Foundation sentence: for children of visiting professors, scholars on sabbatical, research fellows, and foreign diplomats or military posted in France, the €4,295 Adaptation supplement can be fully waived. That is a grant conversation, not an automatic discount on the €10,260.
Lille has its own 2026–27 PDFs, including a boarding sheet, hosted on Google Drive from the tuition page. We are printing the Paris tables we extracted. If you are buying Lille, download those five files and do not reuse this Paris column.
A first-year Paris collège child, not Adaptation, is application + registration + tuition — €13,185 before lunch, clubs, or a lost textbook. An IB DP1 child is application + registration + €32,560, plus the third that sits as a deposit.
Three pieces of paper, easy to mash together.
The BFI is the French baccalaureate with an international section. The school calls it the most advanced French–English bilingual secondary certification. It is a French diploma. If you might stay in France, or you want Parcoursup without a translation argument, this is the path to test on a tour.
The IB Diploma is the portable one. Six subjects, core, CAS. The Paris 2025 results page — the school talking about itself — prints a 100% pass, a median of 39/45, 45% over 40, and three scores of 45. We are not treating that as your child’s forecast.
The High School Diploma is the school’s own leaving certificate, awarded to 12th-graders, and described as especially recognised by US universities. Ask the counselling office what it does without the BFI or the IB sitting next to it.
The 2025 BFI page for Paris prints a 100% pass, 99% with a mention, 64.5% très bien (a third of those with jury congratulations), 91% bien or très bien. That is one cohort, on the school’s site. Rankings in the 2023–24 profile (l’Internaute, “first for ten consecutive years”) are the school quoting a magazine. We are not ranking the lycée.
Adaptation is the published on-ramp for little or no French, CE2–3ème. It is not a specialist SEN school description. The admissions FAQ does not publish a learning-support menu of the VIS kind. Bring current reports. Ask, in the room, whether the school can staff what your child actually needs — in French, in English, and in both at once.
Ask which of the three Paris houses this child would actually enter in September, and how the 08:10 drop-off works if a sibling is on another site. Ask whether the file is Adaptation or mainstream, and what the €4,295 line would be for your employer. Ask who teaches the English half of CE2 mathematics this year. Ask how many 11ths are on BFI versus IB, and whether a child can change their mind in October. Ask what happens if the posting ends in March (any term started is due). Ask Lille only if you need a bed; do not assume a Paris “internat” exists. Ask to see Grade 5 and 2nde, not only the Théâtre tour.
If you might stay in France, ask the BFI question twice: once for Parcoursup, once for a later move. If you will leave in two years, ask the IB office the same two questions the other way around.
We are not saying this is the best school in Paris. We are not guessing the 2027–28 waitlist. We are not printing Lille boarding euros from a Drive file we did not extract in this pass. Accreditation: the school says CIS and NEASC since 2014; CIS news records a re-accreditation on 21 December 2021. Confirm the live cycle. The French ministry contract is the sous contrat sentence; it is not an IB authorisation.
Read the current tuition PDFs and write to admissions before you resign a flat in another arrondissement. This is a map. The school still has to be the right Tuesday.
Official pages and documents we read. If a figure matters to your budget or your application, open the link and confirm it is still current.
Friendly orientation, not an application. Dates, fees, and programme details move. Confirm everything with the school.
The official site is asparis.org. The admissions inbox is asparis.fr. It is a day school in Saint-Cloud, English in every core class, French as a subject. The 2026/27 tuition page prints a capital assessment of €12,200 from Grade 1. Read that page before you fall in love with the forest edge.
Saint-Germain-en-LayeThis 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.
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.
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