In general, you had until September 16 to submit your scholarship applications to enroll your children in a French school or college or Lycée abroad. If you haven’t submitted your file on time, it’s over for this year. But the first campaign for the 2023/2024 school year will start in February, take note so as not to miss the exchanges.
For those who have submitted the complete file before midnight Friday September 16, the journey is not over. We detail it in this article.
First step: the Consular Council
To obtain the scholarship necessary for registration in a French establishment abroad, you must therefore complete this heavy file that you have submitted before the deadline and then pass the various filters put in place by the legislator.
The first filter is that of the Consular Council. Made up of the elected officials you chose in May 2021, they will rule on your file and add comments. If the members consider that your file, complete, corresponds to the spirit of the law which established the scholarships, the latter will be validated. The elected officials can indicate, in view of your situation and that of your country of residence, that they know to live there, if the support must be complete or if it can be partial.
Once their decision has been made, the consular services will forward your file and the opinion of the Consular Council to the commission based in Paris, which is the only one able to decide on your eligibility for the grant and the conditions of support. Small flat, in 2021, the elected officials, to their amazement, discovered, by chance, that their recommendations were not even communicated to the said commission. A contempt of the administration that the minister at the time, Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, had promised to correct, but whose application will have to be monitored by the new minister for French people abroad, Olivier Becht.
Second step : the National Commission for Scholarships
The last and most important stage of this “obstacle course” is the passage before the National Commission for School Scholarships.
The National Scholarship Commission (CNB) brings together the AEFE, the Department of French Nationals Abroad of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, various administrations, parents’ federationstrade unions, associations representing French nationals living abroad recognized as being of public utility (ADFE and UFE), as well as elected representatives of French living abroad, with the exception of senators (since 2018).
The collegiality and the regulatory basis of the commission therefore make it a predominant body, but also complex from a technical point of view. Behind this argument, hides an opacity that prevents knowing exactly the methodology for awarding or not the grant and for what amount.
A situation deplored by local elected officials of French people abroad, but also by Senator Samantha Cazebonne. These echoes were heard by Olivier Becht, who promised, during his exclusive interview on our site on September 11, to propose a reform as soon as possible to increase the number of beneficiaries and make the system of attribution.
But for this year, it will therefore be necessary to do with it, the National Commission for School Scholarships will meet on December 14 and 15. Parents will be informed in the following days of the decision taken on their file.