French International School

EFI is the French-curriculum alternative to the older Lycée Descartes, founded in 2016 and now formally inside the AEFE network from August 2024.

EFI runs two campuses on Diamond Island and at Bassac Garden City, sharing the Koh Pich site with the Canadian International School. The headline draw is the bilingual stream that runs roughly 60 percent French and 40 percent English with two native-speaker teachers per class, alongside a 100 percent French stream now homologated by the French Ministry of Education. Cambridge IGCSE and the IB Diploma sit on top of the upper years, so families can finish on a French Bac or an IB pathway.

Numbers are still small at around 200 students from nursery to lycée, which suits families who want personal attention and a genuine path to either the French system or an Anglo university route. Fabrice Filachet has led since the early years and the cohort skews toward Francophone expat and binational families. The young age of the school and the recency of AEFE entry are the main caveats.

• The Ecole Française Internationale (EFI) opened in 2016 on Diamond Island, Phnom Penh, and now teaches roughly 200 to 500 students from kindergarten through high school, with a French-English bilingual day where 60% of teaching is in French and 40% in English.
• The French stream is AEFE-accredited, which sets EFI in the official French overseas-school network alongside the long-established Lycée français René Descartes. EFI is positioned by parents as the bilingual alternative when families want their child to come out genuinely strong in both languages rather than French-dominant.
• Independent parent voices are thin. Reddit returns nothing on EFI specifically. The most prominent quoted parent in French-language press is Antoine Fontaine, who chose EFI for his five children and praised certified French teachers paired with native English staff. Move to Cambodia and other guides some French families have moved children from Descartes to EFI and that the school has built a strong local reputation in a short time.
• The school shares a campus with the Canadian International School and is still completing its growth into the senior years. Families weighing EFI should treat it as a young, growing AEFE-accredited bilingual rather than an established French-curriculum school in the René Descartes mould.