Have you ever dreamt about moving to France and enjoying the French lifestyle, drinking coffee on a beautiful terrace and wandering around the streets of Paris? 

Photo by Alex Harmuth on Unsplash

I came to France 13 years ago, from a fantastic job at the British Council in Singapore, and I imagined that I would easily find a new great job and spend my free time sitting in French cafés! When I arrived in Paris, I soon realised that the job market here was very different to what I was used to in Asia, and I had to learn how to find the best work for me. It was a lot of trial and error, but I eventually succeeded. 6 years later, even though I had some interesting and well-paid jobs in Paris, I moved to the Cote d’Azur and had to start the job hunt all over again. At least this time I knew how things worked in France. 

So if you’re thinking of working as an EFL teacher in France, here are 10 things you need to know (that I wish I had known at the beginning): 

1). It’s very difficult to get a job from outside of France

It’s unusual for companies or universities to employ people who are not currently in France. There are a lot of teachers already in France, with the necessary work papers, ready to take on a new job. Full-time jobs are rare here, unless you work for a very big school like Wall Street English. Most teachers combine several part-time jobs.

2). A lot of companies want you to be self-employed

Being self-employed in France is actually quite easy. In France, there is a status called auto-entrepreneur or micro-entreprise, which is very easy to set up. It means that you deal with your own social charges and tax and companies can employ you as a sub-contractor. If you’re not required to be self-employed, you may be given a temporary contract valid for one training programme: 20 hours with a particular group for example. It’s quite normal to have several of these contracts on the go at once.

3). There is a lot of work in universities and higher education schools

If you work in a public school, the system is a little complicated: To get a full-time job in a public university in France, you need to have passed a competitive test (called a CAPES or an aggregation). To do this, your French should be of a very high level, plus you need an understanding of how things work in France. If you’re doing the test to become an English lecturer, your knowledge of English is much less important than you would imagine! Because there just aren’t enough English lecturers who have the official CAPES status, public universities in France rely on a system of vacataires to deliver their English language training, To be a vacataire, you have to have another main job that pays your social charges and you can only work up to 144 hours per year in the university. The pay is set by the government at 41€ per hour, but don’t expect to be paid every month! You get paid twice a year and it’s very often late… It doesn’t sound great, but a lot of teachers do supplement their income with vacataire work in public universities.

4). The best jobs are in private business and engineering schools

You can find higher-paid jobs with better contracts than in public universities.

Photo by Chris Karidis on Unsplash

5). Professional development is often left up to the teacher

Since I’ve worked in France, only one workplace actually offered any kind of professional development training. I’m not sure if other companies just don’t care about it, or if they expect the teachers to be doing it themselves. You can join associations such as TESOL France to do your own professional development.

6). Most adult french speakers are around B1

People have studied English at school, (with varying degrees of success) and even though a lot of French use English at work, the level is not that high. It’s rare to work with C1 speakers, especially outside of Paris.

7). In France every adult has a training fund

This is called the CPF – Compte Personnel de Formation, from the government. This is a relatively new system where every working adult receives 500-800€ per year that can only be spent on training. They can choose whatever course they like, there’s no restriction in terms of profession. If you work in France, you’ll also have this training fund.

8). If you’re ok with admin, you can become a provider within this training system

Imagine if you could offer training to your clients knowing that they don’t have to pay anything out of their own pockets! It’s a great system, but you need to jump through quite a few – actually a lot of – administrative hoops to make your training eligible. This includes going through a quality audit that costs around 1500€…

9). Starting your own business is easier than you think!

There is a huge demand for English in France, both for children (language teaching in schools has improved but it has a long way to go…) and for adults. You can easily offer children’s classes on Wednesdays or after school, people ask me if I do this all the time. For adults, you’ll earn much more money if your programmes are eligible for the training funding system or if you can offer corporate training. You can still find private clients or you can use a third party to access the CPF funding for your clients.

10). We have great food and wine in a beautiful country

France has so much to offer in terms of lifestyle: you could spend all your holidays visiting different places in France and never be bored. If you enjoy good quality fresh produce and regional specialities, you’ll be in heaven. You don’t need to be in Paris to find good teaching work: there are other big cities with a good quality of life: Lyon, Toulouse, Montpelier, Strasbourg, Bordeaux and many more. Remote work is also finally catching on: the French are starting to get used to online learning and there are more and more online jobs available. 

Conclusion

Hopefully, this will help you with your quest to find a good teaching job in France so you too can enjoy your free time drinking coffee on a beautiful terrace!