March 13 and 14: the groupement FLE replaces fle.fr

For several years now, the Collège International has been involved with the professional association which comprises dozens of schools for French as a foreign language (f.l.e.).  Two times, in 2000 and 2007, it organized daytime conferences to unite the participating schools, which allows them to coordinate their perspective projects in the field.

The tenth conference was held in Montpellier on March 13th and 14th, and made significant changes to the purpose of the association.

First of all they changed the structure.  Last December, in Lyon during a meeting, it was decided that the association would take the form of a non-profit organization and abandon the name “fle.fr” in favor of “groupement FLE”.  Statutes were elaborated, the principle objectives were decided, a committee director was designated, and a president was elected, in this case it was Patrick de Bouter, director of the Collège International.

It is therefore in this new legal framework that the representatives of the thirty-one schools participating met together to complete the constitutive texts (interior regulation), to discuss and adopt the principle axis for 2009 in three domains concerning the association:

1. Quality and how to guarantee the quality of the stays based upon the special attributes brought by the expertise of the professionals of the FLE, in the teaching as well as the act of welcoming their new students, the reason for which the group presents itself as a “professional reference”.
2. Pooling resources and sharing knowledge, techniques and information to improve mechanisms and tools concerning the profession.
3. Promoting and creating better visibility for potential students, as well as for institutions and other prospects, notably by the creation of a new site concerning “physiognomy” and ergonomics that was presented and approved.  This will be put into effect about April 15th.

The professional conferences are also a means for the representatives to share their experiences, hopes and fears.  This normally occurs as an informal exchange after the work is done, during the social gathering Friday evening.  Accent Français and L’Institut European de Français, the two host groups, organized a surprise party, in the form of a wine tasting which allowed the participants to taste the wines of the native region, Languedoc.

The following day, they all left with their itineraries at hand and more motivation to see their projects succeed.