French, German and Jewish Schools in Mexico City: What Relocating Families Should Know
Most relocating families begin a Mexico City school search with the English-medium international schools. For French, German, Swiss and Jewish families, and for anyone who would like a young child to grow up with a third language, the city has a second set of schools with deep roots and very different rules for getting in.
Schools built for a community first
Mexico City’s European-language and Jewish schools were founded by the communities they serve. The German school opened in 1894 as the school of the German colony. The French school was founded in 1937 by members of the French community, and a Swiss school followed in 1964. The Jewish day schools grew up with the community itself, which today numbers about 41,000 people nationally, around three-quarters of them in Mexico City.
Celina Arbizú, Bennett’s consultant for Mexico and Latin America, puts the practical case simply. A family arriving from Germany whose children speak only German is not going to send them to an English-language school, and for families like that these schools are usually the first conversation. For other families they can be an option too, but the rules for getting in are tighter than at the English-medium schools, and they depend heavily on the child’s age.
If you are weighing the English-medium schools, our interview with Celina covers those and the questions most families start with. This post is about the other set.
The French school
Mexico City’s French lycée has around 3,000 students across two campuses. Polanco runs from maternelle through to the French baccalauréat; Coyoacán runs from maternelle to the end of secundaria, after which students continue at Polanco. The school is part of the French government’s network of schools abroad, and its teaching is accredited by the French Ministry of Education. A second, smaller school in the city is also part of that network.
In primary, pupils work with both a French-speaking and a Spanish-speaking teacher. The upper secondary years are taught in French and lead to the French baccalauréat, and students also receive the Mexican preparatoria certificate, so the qualification is recognized on both sides.
What the school does not publish is a cut-off age for children who arrive without French. The one published route in for students coming from the Mexican system is a single bridge year after the third year of secundaria, built around intensive French, which has to be passed before a student moves up into the lycée. For a younger child arriving from abroad without French, the answer depends on the grade and on space, and it is a question to put to the admissions office directly.
The German school, and the Swiss one
The German school is one of the largest German schools abroad, with three main campuses. Two of them are across the city line in the State of Mexico: La Herradura in Huixquilucan and Lomas Verdes in Naucalpan. The third is in Xochimilco in the south, and each area has its own early-years site. That geography matters. In a city where the commute shapes the choice, which campus is realistic depends on where you live, and often the other way round.
It is what Germany calls an encounter school: most of its students are Mexican children learning German alongside Spanish, rather than the children of German expatriates. Students can leave with the German International Abitur, a German bachillerato recognized by UNAM, Mexico’s national university, and certificates in German and English at an advanced level. It does not offer the International Baccalaureate.
Unusually, it publishes its entry rules for children without German. No German is needed to start in kindergarten. At the Lomas Verdes campus a dedicated program lets children join without German up to the fourth year of primary, and Lomas Verdes and Xochimilco both offer an entry route at the start of secundaria. Outside those points the school publishes no route for a child without German, so it is worth asking before assuming either way.
German-speaking families have a second option in the city’s Swiss school, founded in 1964 and recognized by Switzerland as one of its schools abroad. It teaches German, Spanish, English, French and Mandarin, and has campuses in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Querétaro.
The Jewish day schools
Mexico’s Jewish community is one of the largest in Latin America, and its schools are central to it. There are sixteen Jewish day schools in the country, about a dozen of them in Mexico City, and around 95 percent of Jewish children in Mexico attend one, a proportion few communities anywhere can match. The schools teach in Spanish, with Hebrew and English as major languages, and they are incorporated with the SEP. All of them offer scholarships.
Community life in Mexico City is organized by sub-community, Ashkenazi, Sephardi and others, under a central committee, and the schools are coordinated through a community education body. That structure is the most important thing for an arriving family to understand, because the schools do not publish admissions policies and their enquiry forms ask which community a family belongs to. How a family new to Mexico, or a family that is not Jewish, is considered is not set out anywhere public and appears to vary from school to school. The right first step is a conversation with the school and with the relevant community, ideally before the move date is fixed.
Celina has built up detailed knowledge of the city’s Jewish schools through recent placements, and it is one of the areas families are least likely to find written down anywhere else.
If your family does not speak the school’s language
The pattern across all of these schools is the same: the younger the child, the easier the entry. Kindergarten is the one point at which a child without the school’s language is routinely welcomed, because the schools are designed to build that language from the start. After that, the doors narrow to particular grades, particular campuses and, often, space in a particular year group.
That makes them a real option for a family that wants a third language for a young child, and a harder one for a family arriving with a ten-year-old. It also means the choice is best made early. A child who joins a German or French school at four is on a very different track from one who joins at twelve.
The diploma at the end, and your next move
These schools lead to national qualifications: the French baccalauréat, the German International Abitur. For a French or German family expecting to return home, or to move on within the French or German networks, that continuity is the whole point, and it is worth more than any single school’s reputation.
For a family heading next to the United States or the United Kingdom, both qualifications are widely recognized by universities abroad. The question to ask is a different one: how the next school system will place a child who leaves partway through a French or German program. As so often, the longer-range plan decides the choice in the immediate term.
Across Latin America
The French and German school networks are among the most extensive in the world. The French network counts 640 schools in 140 countries, with more than 400,000 students, and there are around 135 to 140 German schools abroad in more than 70 countries. Latin America is well served by both. São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Bogotá and Lima each have a French-network lycée and at least one German school abroad, and so does Guadalajara.
Monterrey is the exception worth knowing about. It has neither a French-network school nor a German school abroad, so a French or German family heading there will be choosing among bilingual and international schools rather than continuing in their own system. That is exactly the kind of difference that is easy to miss from a distance and costly to discover after the lease is signed.
Talk It Through With Someone Who Knows Mexico City’s Schools
Working out whether a French, German, Swiss, Jewish, bilingual or international school is the right route for your child, and then finding the specific school, is the work our Mexico City consultants do every week. If a Catholic school is part of your thinking, see our guide to Catholic schools in Mexico City.
Get in touch with a consultant who knows Mexico City’s schools, for an hour of clarity →
Bennett International Education Consultancy works directly with hundreds of families each year across the globe. We support families by helping them make informed decisions about the best-fit schools for their children; with our guidance, they secure placement in preschools, private day schools, public/state schools, boarding schools, colleges and universities, including schools with particular programs, such as special needs support.
