Learning Latin, attending Catechism and hurrying along draughty corridors to prayer, two dozen boys are experiencing old-fashioned British boarding school life — deep in the French countryside.
Boxing, folk-dancing and Gregorian chant also figure on the curriculum at Chavagnes International College, a traditional Catholic English boys’ boarding school in the Vendee wine-growing region on France’s Atlantic coast.
Housed in a 200-year-old former seminary in a region marked by France’s wars of religion in the mid-16th century, it says it attracts parents who are disillusioned by the British state school system or the values of modern life.
The fees are also significantly cheaper than in Britain, at 15,000 euros (11,800 pounds) for boarders per year compared with an average of about 22,000 sterling in Britain, according to figures from the Independent Schools Council.