My 9 y.o child will soon meet the 10 year requirement to be eligible for naturalisation (years counting double).
She will be applying separately from parents. She attended an international school since age 4 until this year, now she is at the local public school, but her main language is English.
Given that Fide test is aimed at 16+, and Delf Junior B1 is available to 12+, does it mean she will not be able to apply now and will need to wait until age of 12?
Her older siblings did take Delf tests, but they were over 12 at that moment. One of them already got a passport, another is in the process.
Given that she doesn’t fulfil any of those requirements due to attending international school I suspect she will have to wait until she is old enough to take the test. Unless it was a bilingual school or predominantly french speaking I don’t think it will count under the obligatory schooling option.
I got a super quick reply from the naturalisation department!
"If your daughter is under 12 years old, it is not necessary to provide us with school certificates. She will be exempt from all this due to age.
You have the option of leaving the boxes empty or checking the one related to education, depending on the situation of the person concerned.
If there is a lack of information during the processing of the request, a specialized file manager will contact you to request the correction of the necessary information."
So, she can just apply without any further conditions, similarly like it would have been under family naturalisation.
You have to have a minimum number of years of obligatory schooling in the target language. So even though my kids have only ever gone to school here, we had to copy all their Zuegnis/bulletin scolaire to prove it. I seem to recall my French husband even had to attest to how many years he had been schooled in France to acquit himself of the French requirement! I even seem to remember there was some sort of documentary evidence required but as he has the Baccalaureat I think that certificate was sent in. They were fairly on it when it came to checking our languages and just saying you are French is not enough.
So it just depends how long she has been in school in the target language
Edit really surprised that you do not have to provide the Zeugnis to prove attendence at school - but everywhere is different. We had to here in Jura
We didn’t have to provide them in Neuchâtel either but we did have to list them all on the forms so it would have been very easy for them to check.
Our son had done all his schooling in French so it wasn’t an issue for him and all he had was a 10 minute chat with a couple of people from the commune one of whom happens to live across the street from us so the whole thing was pretty easy here.
Hopefully the OP will be ok but yes, if you have to list schools on the forms (which we did) then it is not as if they are hiding the fact that the child has not been in local school that long.
fwiw, and in a different canton, I also had to provide all the school reports for my then 12 year old. As they were from state schools in German, it was fine.