ENSAI is a public institution of which the official administrative language is French. As a grande école, training substantial numbers of France’s future civil servants in the field of Official Statistics and in the interest of promoting French as a dynamic scientific language, ENSAI is committed to providing programs taught in French and developing French language skills for non-francophone members of its community.
As a higher education institution committed to internationalization, with students, researchers, and personnel coming from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, ENSAI promotes the parallel use of French and English in all its affairs to ensure that communication is clear, effective, efficient, and accessible. This translates into a more welcoming academic and work environment.
While using and learning other languages is encouraged and viewed as beneficial for all members of the ENSAI community, linguistic policy at ENSAI establishes guidelines for the use of only French and English.
By establishing an official linguistic policy, ENSAI seeks to:
- Reaffirm the importance of using French at ENSAI
- Clarify the use of English at ENSAI in administrative, research, and teaching matters
- Facilitate the integration of non-francophone members of the ENSAI community
- Ensure that all members of the ENSAI community have access to essential information
- Facilitate international academic and research collaboration
- Encourage and facilitate the development of linguistic skills, both in French and English, within the ENSAI community
At ENSAI, studying English is mandatory throughout the length of all programs except the Master for Smart Data Science program. To obtain the Engineer Statistician degree, students must certify a minimum B2+ level of English according to the CEFR. ENSAI is committed to raising the English level of not just its students, but also its teachers and staff. The school proposes professionally oriented language courses for staff and has put in place different programs taught entirely in English.
Non-francophone international students at ENSAI pursuing the Engineer Statistician degree must certify a minimum B2 level in French prior to graduation. Mastering French is also a good way to ensure students fit in well and enter the French job market without difficulty. As such, ENSAI organizes French as a Foreign Language (FLE) courses for its international students free of charge. Tandem linguistic exchanges are also an additional option for international students to improve their French while meeting French students.
The Department of Humanities at ENSAI encourages linguistic pluralism by offering students the opportunity to learn other foreign languages: Chinese (Mandarin), German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. These courses allow students to discover other cultures and contribute to their linguistic preparation for international mobility.