Page 181 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

importance of finding a solution. It is likely that the absence of such education played a role in the difficulty, mentioned above, to recruit German (and later British) technicians.
A first meeting with the Rector of the Academy of Grenoble was held in July 1967. It was obvious from the beginning that only the creation of an international school could meet the needs of non-French families whilst offering French families an option that would allow them to give their children an education opening towards Europe. At this time the Ministry of Education was not really open to the idea of an international school.
Towards 1972 the Houille Blanche school was chosen for primary education; English and German teachers paid by their countries allowed the children to keep contact with their language and culture of origin. It was necessary to wait twenty years for a solution to secondary education to be established. The Stendhal Lycée was chosen from 1987 to introduce international classes where several hours tuition was given in the children’s mother tongue. The teachers in charge of these supplementary courses, like those of the Houille Blanche were initially paid by the ministries of their original countries (for the Germans, Italians and Spanish), or by the institutes and the town of Grenoble (for the English teachers); then from 1990 the English and German teachers were paid by the Rectorat.
The success of this formula, the support of the mayor, and
the increasing demand partly due to the start of the ESRF, but
also the arrival of non-French engineers in the new booming technological industries, lead to the construction of a brand-new international school. This has status of an “établissement public local d’enseignement” (EPL) dependant on the Ministry of Education.
172
Chapter 7 - Maturity