A black student has claimed she endured years of racist abuse at a top private school in London attended by children of the Parisian elite.
Gabrielle, a sixth-former at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington, alleged in the school’s own newspaper this week that she had been subjected to racist insults throughout her time there, including being called a “monkey” and told it was “better to be dyslexic than black”.
The teenager also described a culture in which racist jokes were shared on class WhatsApp groups and white pupils asked black classmates for permission to use the N-word. In her article, she wrote: “Racism and xenophobia are widespread in all years. Reflecting on my personal experience, I realise that I have always evolved in a school environment where racism persists.” She added that non-black students used the racial slur “indiscriminately, whenever they want”.
Even more disturbingly, Gabrielle alleged that some teachers also used racist language and made xenophobic comments. She claimed staff had made remarks to non-white pupils such as “king of the jungle” and “close to monkey”, and suggested this behaviour may have contributed to a wider culture of casual racism among students.
“There may be a correlation between the teachers’ crude comments and the behaviour of the pupils,” she wrote, “amongst whom there is now a tendency to make derogatory jokes about what they call dirty Arab and black immigrants.”
She added: “Monkey insults are also very common towards black children, and some boys go so far as to proclaim that they ‘don’t like black girls’. Many justify their comments by labelling them as humour.”
Gabrielle said the “revolting remarks” she experienced over her seven years at the school had “hurt me a lot” and forced her to “build a shield for myself”.
Her account has been echoed by other pupils and parents. One mother of a biracial child at the school said the article had sparked intense discussion and confirmed she had heard parents of non-white pupils talk about moving their children elsewhere because of repeated racist incidents.
She blamed elements within the school community, describing some parents as “Parisian Catholics who are quite right-wing” and “probably believe there are too many Arabs and immigrants in France”. She also said a culture of silence, rooted in fear of being labelled a “snitch” due to France’s experience during the Second World War, allowed the racism to persist unchallenged.
The Lycée, which charges day fees of up to £16,923 a year and has several campuses across London, is overseen by the French embassy and run by the Agency for French Education Abroad. It has long been the preferred choice of the mostly white Parisian professional class, including figures from banking, diplomacy and academia.
The school counts among its alumni actresses Jacqueline Bisset and Natasha Richardson, former Conservative MP Dominic Grieve, and celebrated illustrator Quentin Blake, who also once taught there.
The article was approved for publication by the school’s headteacher, Catherine Bellus-Ferreira, who became head in 2023 and also serves as the director of the school newspaper. She described Gabrielle’s article as “courageous” and said it had highlighted a “real issue”.
“It is important to me that this school struggles against racism,” she said, adding that it was not enough for the school to simply state it opposed discrimination. She acknowledged that investigations had taken place into the behaviour of around a dozen secondary students over the past year.
Pupils found to have used racist language can face suspension for up to eight days and may be required to attend anti-discrimination workshops.
Ms Bellus-Ferreira has overseen significant improvements at the school since it was rated “inadequate” by Ofsted in 2023, with inspectors citing weaknesses in how leaders safeguarded pupils. It has since been upgraded to “good” for pastoral care and “outstanding” for education.
While the headteacher admitted it would be dishonest to claim there were no instances of racism at the school, she insisted it was not “a racist school”.
Founded in 1915 to educate French-speaking refugees from the First World War, the Lycée has since grown into a prestigious institution. It was visited by General Charles de Gaulle in 1960 and named in his honour two decades later.
The wider French education system is also under scrutiny. According to a recent report by the French education ministry, 16 “serious incidents” were recorded per 1,000 pupils during the 2023–24 academic year.
