Well her we go, it could be long!
First I should say that our kids have dual citizenship (French & British) and are fluent in both languages which, of course, help them adapt to both countries.
I know more of the training in France as we have lived here for a while now and what I know of the UK training is through Summer schools, auditions and watching classes...
We have 3 DDs, aged 9, 12 and 14. The 2 eldest are extremely keen dancers and both want to become professionals, one in Ballet and the other one as a Musical artist. The youngest is still undecided and dances mainly for the pleasure but having said that, she insists on finding the best level possible for her age...
For the last 4 years, they all danced in a vocational school which they left in November because the level had gone down drastically and they joined a local school where they have progressed amazingly.
In that vocational school, the eldest used to dance about 14 hours a week, mainly ballet, 2 classes of contemporary and 1 of character. The middle one about 11 hours, also mainly ballet with 1 contemporary and 1 caracter classes. And the youngest used to dance 6 hours a week still mainly ballet with 1 contemporary class. All 3 also had 1 hour of History of dance a week and compulsory shows to go and see...
Most vocational schools will work this way in France with a variation of hours of teaching.
In the local school which they have joined, they dance a bit less but the teaching being so much better, the progress is impressive. Unfortunately, as much as the 2 new teachers are fantastic, everybody knows that the 2 eldest will outgrow the school rather quickly and that we had to find another school in the near future.
Our DDs did and are still auditioning for different vocational schools in the UK and in France and maybe that's where my knowledge of some of both countries vocational schools can be useful to the forum.
In France, apart from POB which works like RBS, vocational schools are only dance schools and they have an agreement with academic schools (private or state schools) so that the children go to academic school only half the day. You get in those academic schools only if you have been taken in by the vocational schools and your academic level must be high to be able to cope with doing the whole yearly programme in about half the time. The kids can also be home schooled through a national programme for home schooling and again to be allowed to do that, you have to be in a vocational school. State vocational schools are free and so are the state schools attached to them so the question of funding is not really relevant here. POB is free for everybody except for the cost of compulsory canteen (50€ a month) or boarding when necessary (around 500€ a month).
Some vocational schools are private but the cost is nothing compared to the UK. The 2 best ballet ones in Paris cost between 2400 & 3300€ a year.
Of course, the problem of boarding is really acute as you have to find a host family or a boarding house if you live too far for the kids to travel to school and the children also have to go between academic school and vocational school on their own at lunchtime... But they often do that as a group so it doesn't tend to be a problem. Every region has at least one state vocational school (not all of them of high level but they can spot potential and send the children to higher level ones).
Apart from POB and if I only take Paris, you have the choice of 3 private vocational schools and 2 state ones. One of the state ones is from the age of 14 and the next best school after POB to become a ballerina.
Another difference between the 2 countries is that vocational level and academic level are completely separate here. The children have a certain level in dance and can have a different level at school. It means that they are put in their real dance level and not in their age group (within limits of course). In my second DD's dance class (she is 12), you can find kids who are 13 or 11 depending on their dance level. So because she's a year ahead at academic school, doesn't mean she has to dance with kids who are much older than her or worse be turned down because she hasn't reached a dance level which doesn't correspond to her body capacity.
Going back to our DDs and our family experience...
Our eldest auditioned at Tring for their Performance Foundation course (4th form) and was successful but didn't get a scholarship which through a spanner in the works as it costs around £27000 a year. She also auditioned in Paris for a similar course costing 4200€ a year in THE Musical Theatre school. What decide us not to take up the Tring place was the amount of hours offered. In Tring she would have had 6 hours of dancing (1&1/2 hours of ballet), 6 hours of theatre and 6 hours of singing a week. In Paris, she will do 15 hours of dancing (7 hours of ballet), singing, theatre and musical theatre for a total of 20 hours a week. For a kid who has been dancing ballet for most of her life, going down to 1 class a week was unthinkable especially since the post 16 school like Northern Ballet School, which she has an eye on, auditions only on Ballet...
Our middle one is definitely a ballet dancer. She got a place at RBS Summer school for this summer and is waiting to hear about RBS MA... She will be auditioning for POB in May. She successfully auditioned at Tring for their Junior Dance course but even though she is British couldn't get a MdS as she has not been a resident for the last 2 years. There again, the number of pure ballet that Tring had to offer was lower than the good French vocational schools. She has been accepted in, some say, the best private vocational school in Paris and, if she takes the place, will do more ballet than Tring was going to offer plus Jazz & contemporary. Some other vocational school only offers ballet and then one does about 15 hours of it a week.
When my 2 daughters auditioned on different dates, I had lots of hours of waiting and I did see a good amount of ballet classes in the big studio with a glass partition in Tring. I have to add that I used to dance and I have seen many hours of ballet classes in my life. And what I saw disturbed me... The small kids were quite good given their age but the post 16 ones were another story. There were some outstanding ones but it wasn't the norm, what disturbed me were the things that weren't corrected and maybe it was too late to correct them. The non closed 5th position for example at that age and in a vocational school is simply not acceptable for me! I know Tring might not be a ballet specialist school but still and given the price of tuition, it worried me...
It made sense for us, at least for the moment, for them to keep on dancing in France. It made sense financially but also for dancing. We had our eye on the Northern Ballet in Leeds for a while because it seems like a wonderful school which works much more like French vocational schools do but we decided it was too far for us!
We also considered going back to the UK and going to "normal" dance schools but decided against it as I was reading mainly on the forum how kids have to go to different schools to get to a respectable numer of hours plus Associate classes and it really seems like very very hard work for everyone in the family.
But the final nail in the coffin for us was the RAD or ISTD "monopoly"... I don't want to upset anyone here so bear with me. I know and agree on the importance of having exams and our children always have exam at the end of the year to be able to go to the next level. You either pass or fail. If you fail, you stay in the same level. The exams are in front of a an unknown panel and it gets you used to auditions. The difference is that those exams are prepared in the last month of the school year and one don't spend weeks preparing. They consist of a class and a variation generally. The rest of the year is syllabus free and you're supposed to have reach a certain level through these free classes which shows on exam day...
We were very nicely invited to sit through different classes at Tring Associates which is RAD orientated and that's what made us decide against going there even though the girls had already been accepted. The dance was so rigid and stilted even though the teachers were lovely, they had to do the same exercices every week in order to master them for the exam and that was in February when the exams are much later I think. I couldn't see any room for expressing yourself, musicality, trying new and difficult things, etc... The levels too were off for us. Our 12 years old was above the level of the 14 years old there and our 9 years old would have been just under what the 12 years old could do there. It was very worrying for us since Tring Associates was our best hope for not having to drive all over the South East of the UK in search of good classes...
So France it is then for the time being! As a UK dance teacher said to me once "you have wonderful dance schools in France and Italy for the ages of your kids but not much after A level when we have wonderful schools. Wait until they are 16 before you come back to the UK"...
I hesitated before writing all of that because I don't want to start a new Franco-British war so please don't get upset because of our family's conclusions. They're only our own...
