Classroom or Tower of Babel? Afghans, Peruvians, Georgians, Americans… And for more than a year, Ukrainians have been crossing paths and rubbing shoulders in this private lesson given at Lycée Fénelon, in Lille, in the North. They are between 15 and 18 years old. Everyone has their own journey, their slice of life. “This year, I have 14 different nationalities in the beginner, intermediate or advanced groups,” explains Delphine Caron, a teacher specializing in teaching French to foreigners.
In this high school where she has been teaching for six years, these weekly classes are not academic. “The principle is the linguistic bath based on multimedia pedagogy with smartphones. These telephones are veritable Swiss Army knives of learning: we have the image, the audio, the translation”, underlines the teacher who also favors role-playing and role-playing. Go get a baguette at the market, for example. “The objective is to make them autonomous very quickly in the language”, assures Delphine Caron.
Specific support network
It is an unknown device that facilitates the integration of all these foreign students: the Casnav. Set up by the National Education, there are in each academy. That of Lille has 78 UPE2A (pedagogical unit for incoming allophone children) in the Nord and Pas-de-Calais. Its role: to organize the schooling of children newly arrived in France by reinforcing the learning of French.
The Casnav of Lille is one of the most important in France, with that of Versailles. Thanks to this specific support network, National Education can cope with the massive arrival of refugee children. As has been the case since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A year later, in mid-February, 461 Ukrainians were thus followed in this system. Their number has stabilized in recent weeks. “With an arrival rate of between four and seven per week, the Lille academy will record a record by exceeding 4,000 arrivals in 2023, all nationalities combined”, announces Reinold Masure, academic manager of Casnav. Some regions have experienced a larger wave of Ukrainian migration, but the twinning between the city of Lille and that of Kharkiv has nevertheless attracted many families.
“I quickly made progress”
This is the case of Zhasmine K. who is studying at Fénelon high school where she also attends French reinforcement courses organized by Casnav: twice four hours a week. At 15, the young girl followed her father and mother who had friends in Lille. “When I arrived in France, I had no knowledge of the language,” she explains in Ukrainian. French was difficult, but I quickly made progress. The atmosphere in high school really helps to learn a foreign language. »
The high school teachers do their best to help him integrate, in particular by printing the lessons in Ukrainian. “It allows me, Anna, a Ukrainian friend, and me to understand better, specifies the young girl. When I arrived in Lille, it was my father, who speaks French, who helped me with my lessons, now I manage on my own. “Proof that this support system works, even if it had to adapt. “The Ukrainians have shaken up our way of doing things, admits Reinold Masure. They arrived without following the usual channels, often by car. Many were housed with individuals and not in hostels. »
“It is difficult to follow them”
However, these places of learning, run by around a hundred specialized teachers, are traditionally located near these foster homes. “We have to adjust the network geographically because sometimes the children live in the countryside, notes Reinold Masure. The academy has set up, for example, a micro-device of 50 additional hours per isolated student. Another structural difficulty is student monitoring. “We have trouble because they are very mobile and very autonomous, continues the manager. At the start of the school year, in September 2022, we noticed, for example, that a third of the students had left during the holidays. It’s complicated to build a school career in these conditions. »
Especially since for almost all young Ukrainian migrants, the link with the country is not broken, unlike others. They continue to follow distance education, as confirmed by Zhasmine. “Once a week I have an online class with a Ukrainian teacher,” she told 20 minutes. The other reason for this fluctuating commitment is that the French school level is a little out of step. “The courses I am currently taking in high school, I studied them two years ago in Ukraine,” says Zhasmine. “They often have a very good level in math,” confirms Reinold Masure. But not only.
“We don’t know when it will be possible to return to our country”
“Ukrainian children pass the bac at the end of the first, underlines the person in charge. It is therefore not uncommon to welcome teenagers who already have the diploma at 16 or 17 years old. Should they be sent to high school or college? We messed up a bit at first, it’s true. Fortunately, a deputy principal who had worked in Ukraine before helped us train everyone to be able to respond in the best possible way. Now, we favor post-baccalaureate training, despite the young age. »
For Zhasmine’s family, the bac still remains a distant goal. “The most important thing was to enroll Zhasmine in school so as not to waste time, because we don’t know when it will be possible to return to our country. Stress also plays its part, because the move was unplanned and forced,” says Iryna, her mother.
After a year in the north of France, integration is still complicated. “I spend most of my time with Anna, recognizes Zhasmine. I don’t communicate much with French people because my level is not sufficient to follow a conversation. Zhasmine and her friend Anna also complain of “mockery” suffered by certain French high school students supporting the invasion of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But this geopolitical context also offers reasons for hope. In a college in Lille, a Russian and a Ukrainian, united in the same class, have become the best friends in the world, confides to us the principal who prefers to remain anonymous.