assistantsinfrance.com

The first of the teaching assistant applications is now available, for Australian citizens. The application deadline is December 11, 2009 and there are 80 positions available. Go to the France in Australia site for more information. Also note that if any Australians applied last year and were accepted into the program, but then ultimately decided to not do the assistantship, they are disqualified from applying this year.

Most other countries will make their applications available in October, so keep checking the official websites. The US program has already announced the due date for applications as January 15, 2010. I will post links to other applications and due dates when they are announced.

If you are having trouble posting messages on the forums, there suddenly seems to be a bug with using accented characters, including the euro symbol. If you use these characters, you will get an error message that says:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 1245184 bytes) in /home/lee/public_html/assistants/forums/includes/utf/data/utf_compatibility_decomp.php on line 2

You just need to replace all accented characters with regular characters and you should be able to post. I'm not quite sure what is causing this problem or why it is just now happening.

As I mentioned earlier, the rules for the long-stay visa for France have changed as of June 1st, 2009. In addition to what has normally been required to apply for a long-stay visa, you must now also include the OFII residence form so that it can be stamped by the consulate. You can download it here: OFII residence form

Information on the new rules and what you need to do after arrival in France can be found on the forum: First residence permit in France

For the Australian and New Zealander assistants, the French embassies in both countries are now issuing biometric visas that require a photograph and all ten fingerprints to be taken. Therefore, personal appearance will be required at the embassies in Sydney and Wellington to obtain a visa for France and mail-in applications are no longer allowed. In Australia, you must make an appointment through the embassy's website, and in New Zealand, you must call the embassy.

*The embassy in Sydney will be closed July 15-17 for engineering work.

Language assistants and students in France will no longer be required to obtain a carte de séjour from the préfecture, as they have had to do in the past.

After the medical visit, you will receive a vignette to be placed in your passport. This will serve as a replacement for the carte de séjour, and you will still be eligible for CAF with this vignette.

The vignette *may* be valid for an entire year instead of just the duration of the assistant contract. Some details are still unknown and a little vague, but this change is to simplify the process for everyone involved. I'll post more information when it's available.

Starting with the 2009-10 academic year, the French Ministry of Education has eliminated the IUFM assistantships, leaving only the 7 month (secondary and primary) and 9 month (primary) positions.

The 9 month positions are continuously decreased every year as well, so eventually the teaching assistantship will only offer 7 month positions at either the secondary or primary level.

If accepted applicants put IUFM as a preference, obviously it will be ignored. The Ministry of Education just recently eliminated the positions, which is why the IUFM option was still on the application.

The US program has started sending out acceptance e-mails as of today, April 6. Congratulations to all those accepted!