The PIE: To what extent does the French government get involved with the industry and help promote it?

PdB: With the French presidential elections approaching, we can only hope that the French government will in the near future listen to the profession and participate more in the promotion of the French language.

It’s a shame that the current visa restrictions have resulted in many students choosing Switzerland or Canada rather than France to learn French, but as you know only too well we are obviously not alone in suffering from visa problems.

The PIE: Do Groupement FLE members work with education agents and to what extent can these relationships be improved?

PdB: Yes they certainly do, even though working with agents is still relatively new for some centres which have in the past traditionally worked more through the network of French embassies and cultural institutes. We have increased our presence and visibility at agent workshops. We have a stand at ALPHE London and ICEF Berlin, and are currently investigating the possibility of attending more workshops in the future.

Our emphasis on quality is a guarantee for agents and this reassures them when they decide to start working with one of our member centres. At our annual meeting in Lyon in January one of the workshops was a very fruitful discussion on what is important for an agent when working with a language centre. Our ultimate aim is to produce a guide on mutual good working practices for centre-agent partnerships.

The PIE: Which are France’s best source countries across GFLE membership?

PdB: They are incredibly varied! Each centre has its own target countries, this depends on the destinations and the relations the centres have with their agents. But for some there are also obvious geographical implications, for example our centres in the south of France tend to attract students from neighbouring countries such as Spain and Italy, particularly in the summer months. Each centre has developed partnerships with agents in specific countries or is present in certain niche markets.

“It’s a shame that the current visa restrictions have resulted in many students choosing Switzerland or Canada”

The PIE: How do you think the Français comme Langue Etrangere (FLE) market is faring in general?

PdB: In the last few years the French language has suffered from the increasing importance of other languages such as Spanish, and the language market in France has faced competition from other countries, notably Canada. But France is still the number one tourist destination worldwide, renowned for its quality of life and variety in so many different ways, and this attractiveness means that large numbers of people still want to learn to speak French. So the general feeling among our members is that they are still very optimistic about the future.