You have just moved from Britain to France with a seven-year-old, the removal boxes are still in the hallway, and the local mairie, the town hall, hands you a list of papers before your child can start school. One neighbour warns you that without a French residence permit the school will turn you away, another says the only free place is in a prefabricated room behind the sports hall, and the school secretary mentions an assessment of your child’s French that sounds suspiciously like an entrance exam. This guide answers those worries from the French statutes and court decisions in force on 2 October 2026, as they apply to a British family after Brexit. It is written for a British reader, and every French term is explained the first time it appears. French law makes schooling compulsory from the age of three to sixteen for every child living in France, whatever the parents’ nationality or immigration status, and the courts have repeatedly punished town halls that refused foreign children or parked them in separate rooms. Each of those rights has a deadline, a short list of papers and a remedy attached, and the six decisions examined below show how families win on exactly those points. This article does not replace advice on your own file, but it gives you the rules, the papers and the challenges that work.

I. How do I enrol my British child in a French state school, and which papers and deadlines apply?

A. Which school takes my child, and when must I act?

Start with the principle, because everything else flows from it. French statute provides that “L’instruction est obligatoire pour chaque enfant dès l’âge de trois ans et jusqu’à l’âge de seize ans.” Since the loi pour une école de la confiance of 2019 lowered the starting age from six to three, your three-year-old goes to école maternelle, the free state nursery school, your six-year-old enters école élémentaire, the state primary school running from cours préparatoire to cours moyen deuxième année, and older children continue to collège, lower secondary, then lycée, upper secondary. The same code adds that “Tout enfant a droit à une formation scolaire qui, complétant l’action de sa famille, concourt à son éducation.” Note the word enfant: the right belongs to the child, not to the parents’ passport, visa or residence permit. The official service-public guidance for families settling in France confirms that these schooling rules apply whatever your nationality, and it organises the procedure differently for a first installation and for a return to France, which is exactly the situation of a British family arriving after Brexit. That page is worth bookmarking alongside this article.

For nursery and primary school, the route runs through the mairie of the commune where you live, the smallest French local authority area, roughly your town or village. Each year the mayor draws up the school roll, then issues each family a certificat d’inscription, the enrolment certificate naming the child’s school, and only then do you present yourself at that school with the certificate and the vaccination record to complete the admission. The official guidance states that registration should be completed by June before the September rentrée, the start of the school year, that most town halls open applications in March, and that some open as early as the first term of the preceding year, so a family arriving in spring must move fast and a family arriving in August must still apply, late but with the same rights. If your child is six or older, the mairie directs you to dedicated teachers who assess school learning: spoken and written French, skills in other taught languages, school knowledge acquired in English such as mathematics, and familiarity with classroom literacy. Where the level suffices, the child joins an ordinary class from cours préparatoire to cours moyen deuxième année; where it does not, the child joins a unité pédagogique pour élèves allophones arrivants, known as UPE2A, a dedicated language unit for newly arrived non-French-speaking pupils who follow intensive French while joining ordinary classes for the rest. The statute expressly provides that “Des actions particulières sont prévues pour l’accueil et la scolarisation des élèves non francophones nouvellement arrivés en France.” That assessment is a placement tool, not a pass-or-fail exam, and a weak score in French can never justify leaving the child without any school, as the court decisions in Part II demonstrate.

For collège and lycée, allocation works differently: places are assigned by the education authority of your académie, the regional education district, through its departmental offices, the direction des services départementaux de l’éducation nationale, usually called the DSDEN, on the basis of school sectors, and families seeking another school must request a dérogation, a formal exemption from the sector rule. The official guidance for newcomers directs families who meet difficulties at any stage to contact the DSDEN of their département, the county-level area, and that single sentence is your most useful practical address when a file stalls. Two alternatives exist outside the state sector. A private school under contract with the state, an école privée sous contrat, follows the national curriculum with its own admission file and often modest fees, while home schooling, the instruction en famille, now requires prior authorisation from the state education authority, because the statute says parents must enrol the child in a public or private school “Les personnes responsables d’un enfant soumis à l’obligation scolaire définie à l’article L. 131-1 doivent le faire inscrire dans un établissement d’enseignement public ou privé ou bien, à condition d’y avoir été autorisées par l’autorité de l’Etat compétente en matière d’éducation, lui donner l’instruction en famille.” Moving house does not pause the duty either, since “Les mêmes formalités doivent être accomplies dans les huit jours qui suivent tout changement de résidence.” In Paris and the inner suburbs, where sectors are tight and some mairies d’arrondissement, the district town halls, close inscription windows early, apply in March, keep proof of every step, and copy the DSDEN de Paris at the first sign of trouble, because a paper trail made in spring decides cases argued in autumn.

B. Which documents can the mairie lawfully demand when we rent, lodge with friends or have just arrived?

The fear most British parents voice is the paperwork: a tenancy still in a parent’s name, a family lodging you while you house-hunt, a passport with a post-Brexit stamp, no French tax notice yet. The statute answers with a closed list. It provides that “Chaque année, à la rentrée scolaire, le maire dresse la liste de tous les enfants résidant dans sa commune et qui sont soumis à l’obligation scolaire.” and it adds that “La liste des pièces qui peuvent être demandées à l’appui de cette demande d’inscription est fixée par décret.” Read those two sentences together and the position is clear: the mayor enrols resident children, the supporting documents come from a national list, and a town hall cannot invent extra conditions such as a French residence permit, a tax assessment, a particular visa stamp or a minimum period of residence. In practice the official guidance asks for two things only, an identity document for you and the child, where a passport, an identity card, the livret de famille, the French family record book, a copy of the birth certificate or even a sworn statement, an attestation sur l’honneur, all suffice, plus a recent proof of address, for which the same sworn statement is expressly accepted. The guidance repeats that sworn statement twice, for identity and for address, and that repetition is deliberate: a family in a holiday let, in employer housing or between two tenancies can still register. Keep copies of everything you hand over and ask for a dated receipt, because the refusal cases below often turned on what the file actually contained.

Three situations deserve detail because British newcomers meet them constantly. First, lodging with friends or family, called hébergement: bring a signed accommodation statement from your host with a copy of the host’s identity document and proof of the host’s own address, add anything linking you to the address such as insurance, post or a bank letter, and file the sworn statement the guidance allows. A mairie that rejects an attestation d’hébergement out of hand, without examining it, exposes itself to the annulment cases examined in Part II. Second, arrival mid-year or after a move within France: the eight-day rule quoted above means you re-register immediately, the former school issues a certificat de radiation, the leaving certificate, and the new mairie cannot make you wait for the next September. The dedicated official page for enrolment after a move sets out that specific procedure step by step. Third, vaccination: the school completes admission on proof that the child has received the compulsory vaccinations for the age or holds a medical certificate of contraindication, and where British and French calendars differ, your GP or a French médecin traitant, the registered family doctor, can attest equivalence or arrange catch-up jabs, which is a health formality, not a ground for refusing the school place itself.

Two judicial points close the file before any dispute arises. The Versailles administrative court of appeal, upholding the annulment of a mayor’s decision that had placed twelve Romanian Roma children in a room beside a municipal gymnasium instead of in a school, held that “ni l’incomplétude des dossiers d’inscription, ni l’incertitude sur le nombre, l’identité et le niveau de français des enfants concernés, ni même le caractère transitoire du dispositif, à le supposer avéré dès l’origine, étaient de nature à justifier une quelconque différence de traitement et, par voie de conséquence, faire obstacle à une scolarisation ordinaire au sein d’un établissement scolaire de la commune”. An incomplete file, an uncertain headcount, a child who speaks no French: none of it justifies different treatment, and still less no schooling at all. And where the parents’ own presence in France is precarious, the Conseil d’État, the supreme administrative court, ruled that a mayor’s total refusal of schooling was unlawful for children who were genuinely resident in the commune, since the judges noted the family lived there “dès lors qu’ils résidaient effectivement sur le territoire de la commune”, even though that residence came from an unauthorised occupation of land, a point developed below. For a British family whose visas or residence cards are still being processed, the message is direct: enrol the child now on proof of address, sort the immigration file in parallel, and never accept being told that schooling must wait for the préfecture, the state authority that issues residence permits. Readers dealing with the related question of taking children back to Britain or fixing where they live after a separation will find the companion analysis of Franco-British custody, return and relocation orders useful background, since enrolment disputes often surface inside those cases.

II. What can I do if the mairie or the school says no, and how do I challenge a refusal?

A. How do I react to a refusal, a delay or a separate-room arrangement?

Refusals rarely arrive as a stamped letter saying no. The common forms are silence after you file, a request for one more document every fortnight until the term is gone, an offer of a makeshift room outside any school while places stand empty inside, or a suggestion that your child wait for next year to learn French first. French administrative law treats prolonged silence as an implied refusal, an unwritten decision you can challenge like an express one, so start the clock yourself: file the enrolment in writing, keep proof of filing, diary every visit and call, and from the first difficulty write to the DSDEN of your département, which the official guidance names as the contact when inscription fails. Send the mairie a short recorded letter restating the child’s name, date of birth, your address and the school year sought, enclosing the identity and address papers, and asking for the certificat d’inscription within two weeks. Copy the DSDEN. That letter later becomes exhibit one, and as one Conseil d’État ruling confirms, “un requérant peut se borner à demander à une collectivité publique ou à l’administration réparation d’un préjudice qu’il estime avoir subi pour ne chiffrer ses prétentions et ne préciser les chefs de préjudice qu’il invoque que devant le juge administratif”, so a parent seeking compensation does not need to put a figure on the loss in that first letter; the numbers can wait for the judge.

The leading refusal case is Conseil d’État, 19 December 2018, Ris-Orangis. Two children aged seven and nine, living with their parents in the commune since the summer of 2012, asked for school places for the September 2012 return; the mayor first refused all schooling by silence, then from 21 January 2013 placed them in a converted room outside any school until the préfet, the state representative in the département, requisitioned proper school places on 19 February 2013. The Conseil d’État first clarified the division of roles: when the mayor draws up the annual list of resident children subject to compulsory schooling, he acts in the name of the state, so a general refusal to list the children engages the liability of the state, not the commune. It then held the refusal unlawful on the facts set out above, condemning the state to pay each parent 500 euros in their own name and 500 euros for each of the two children for the moral harm of five months without school. The historical wording the court applied that day is worth keeping, because it states the nationality point in its bluntest form: “L’instruction est obligatoire pour les enfants des deux sexes, français et étrangers, entre six ans et seize ans.” British children were third-country nationals for this purpose from 1 January 2021, and that sentence covers them exactly as it covered the Romanian children of the case.

The follow-up ruling is harsher still for separate-room arrangements. Conseil d’État, 8 December 2023, same commune, twelve Romanian Roma children aged five to twelve placed from 21 January 2013 in a room next to a municipal gymnasium, fitted out with basic equipment, outside any school and away from the commune’s other pupils, while places stood free in the commune’s schools, depriving them of the canteen and of complementary and after-school activities. The court ruled that this joint decision of the commune and the state “méconnaît le principe d’égalité de traitement des usagers du service public, quelle que soit leur origine, et est entachée d’illégalité pour ce motif”, adding that “constitutive d’une faute de nature à engager la responsabilité solidaire de la commune de Ris-Orangis et de l’Etat à l’encontre des demandeurs”, and it fixed the moral harm of four weeks in those conditions at 800 euros owed jointly by the commune and the state. Relying on the letter the Défenseur des droits, the independent rights ombudsman, had sent the mayor on 5 February 2013, the court recorded that “les enfants n’ont pu bénéficier que d’une forme dégradée de scolarisation délivrée dans un cadre inapproprié, à l’écart des autres enfants accueillis dans les écoles de la commune, sans pouvoir accéder au service de restauration scolaire et aux activités complémentaires et périscolaires organisées au sein des écoles”. A British parent offered a corridor classroom, a rota of a few hours a week or a separate cabin while French pupils sit in real classrooms should recognise the pattern and name it: segregated schooling without a statutory basis is unlawful, and the authority that orders it pays.

Your remedies then run in a clear ladder. First, the friendly stage: written request, DSDEN referral, and a complaint to the Défenseur des droits, whose intervention letters carry visible weight in both rulings above and whose local delegates receive families free of charge. Second, the administrative court: ask the tribunal administratif, the first-level administrative court, to annul the refusal or the abnormal placement, remembering that “La juridiction ne peut être saisie que par voie de recours formé contre une décision, et ce, dans les deux mois à partir de la notification ou de la publication de la décision attaquée.” Two months from a written refusal, and for silence, two months from the date the implied refusal is born, which your dated filing proves. Third, urgency: where the refusal is grave and plainly unlawful and the school year is running, the emergency judge can order any measure needed to protect a fundamental freedom, since the statute says that “le juge des référés peut ordonner toutes mesures nécessaires à la sauvegarde d’une liberté fondamentale à laquelle une personne morale de droit public ou un organisme de droit privé chargé de la gestion d’un service public aurait porté, dans l’exercice d’un de ses pouvoirs, une atteinte grave et manifestement illégale”, ruling within forty-eight hours in the référé-liberté, the liberty emergency procedure; the Versailles families themselves used the parallel référé-provision, the emergency damages advance, under which “Le juge des référés peut, même en l’absence d’une demande au fond, accorder une provision au créancier qui l’a saisi lorsque l’existence de l’obligation n’est pas sérieusement contestable.” Fourth, compensation: after annulment or alongside it, claim the moral harm of weeks without school or of degraded schooling, using the 500 and 800 euro awards above as yardsticks while documenting your own loss, missed workdays, private lessons paid, a child kept home. In Paris, file at the tribunal administratif de Paris, serve the Ville de Paris and, where the mayor acted for the state, the recteur, the head of the académie, and expect the judge to examine the file paper by paper, exactly as Versailles did.

B. What about the canteen, after-school care and getting the school I actually want?

Once the place is secured, daily life turns on three extras: the cantine, the school canteen, the périscolaire, the supervised before- and after-school care with homework help and activities, and the choice of school itself. On the canteen the statute could hardly be clearer: “L’inscription à la cantine des écoles primaires, lorsque ce service existe, est un droit pour tous les enfants scolarisés. Il ne peut être établi aucune discrimination selon leur situation ou celle de leur famille.” The Conseil d’État confirmed on 12 April 2021, in a Besançon case where parents had been refused canteen places for lack of room, that the legislature intended communes running a canteen to serve the general interest of admitting every pupil and never to refuse on grounds contrary to equality, while adding the one lawful exception, that a commune may refuse “lorsque, à la date de leur décision, la capacité maximale d’accueil de ce service public est atteinte”. Translate that into practice: a refusal hinting at your British origin, your single-parent household, your unemployment or your address is unlawful; a refusal reasoned by full capacity on the decision date, with a waiting list re-examined as attendance evolves, can stand. Ask for the refusal in writing, check whether it mentions capacity figures or your personal situation, and challenge the second kind through the same ladder as a schooling refusal. Tariffs linked to family income, the quotient familial, are a separate question from admission and are lawful in themselves; discrimination in access is not.

Getting the school you prefer, rather than any school, is harder, and honesty requires saying so. A dérogation from your sector school is never automatic: the official guidance says the request goes to the mairie and may fail, and the Paris administrative court of appeal confirmed on 25 October 2024 that a mother who contested her daughter’s assignment to two successive upper-secondary schools, while seeking a place at the Vincennes lycée of her choice, lost, because the contested assignment put the pupil “dans un établissement scolaire dans lequel il ne ressort pas des pièces du dossier qu’il serait impossible de suivre des études”, in a school where nothing in the file showed further study was impossible. The lesson is sharp: courts protect the right to a real school, not the right to a favourite one, so build a dérogation file on verifiable grounds such as a sibling already enrolled, a documented medical need, a travel impossibility or a specific course option absent from the sector school, and keep expectations measured. One protection, however, is absolute once a child is placed outside the home commune: the Conseil d’État ruled on 30 June 2025 that “La scolarisation d’un enfant dans une école d’une commune autre que celle de sa résidence ne peut être remise en cause par l’une ou l’autre d’entre elles avant le terme soit de la formation préélémentaire, soit de la scolarité primaire de cet enfant commencées ou poursuivies durant l’année scolaire précédente dans un établissement du même cycle de la commune d’accueil”, meaning a child welcomed in a neighbouring commune finishes the nursery or primary cycle there and neither commune may cut it short. The same ruling adds a tactical warning: where the mairie grants the place while proceedings run, the annulment claim becomes moot, so file the damages claim in the same application from the start rather than suing twice. Families planning further ahead, including the choice of English law for a will covering the French home so the children’s schooling is never disrupted by a succession dispute, can read the desk’s standing guide to choosing English law for a British will covering a French house as the companion piece.

Conclusion

Your British child holds the same school right as a French child from the day you live in France: compulsory schooling from three to sixteen, enrolment at the mairie on identity and address papers with sworn statements accepted, placement by level with language support rather than exclusion, a canteen open to all pupils, and continuity of the cycle once granted. No residence permit, no tax notice and no French test conditions any of it. When a mairie stays silent, demands papers outside the national list or offers a room behind the gym instead of a classroom, the paper trail you build in March, the DSDEN letter, the Défenseur des droits complaint, the two-month court deadline and the forty-eight-hour emergency route decide the outcome, and the Ris-Orangis, Besançon, Versailles, Paris and Neauphle-le-Château rulings above show judges annulling, ordering and awarding damages in exactly these patterns. Enrol early, file everything in writing, and challenge every refusal as the unlawful decision it is.