successful integration for the 18,000 refugee children attending school in France

In the middle of the schoolyard, they are children almost like the others. Volodymyr and Oleksandr take a badminton lesson that morning, after three months in France. “I like this school, I have good friends“, says Oleksandr, pupil of CM1. The two Ukrainian children are already at ease with their classmates. But in class, participating is often less obvious, as in mathematics class.

This does not prevent these young people from learning: they are entitled to adapted exercises, sometimes even in Ukrainian. Oleksandr arrived in France last March, with his mother and brother but without his father, who stayed behind for work. He lived in Irpin (Ukraine), in the suburbs of kyiv. The mother, Ola Zelenska, learned French at university. She hopes that her children will also manage to master the language of Molière. In total, 18,000 Ukrainian children are educated in France, including more than 1,600 in the Nice academy (Alpes-Maritimes) alone.