Lycée Albert I

Just before we move onto the big beautiful building behind us, I want you to look at the orange and blue coloured building standing just opposite it – this is a public high school in Monaco. I don’t know what public high schools look like in your country, but this isn’t too shabby at all.

Education is taken very seriously and plays a big role in Monaco – around 7% of the national budget is put towards education, much more than other countries like the UK where this number is closer to 3% or the USA where it is around 1%. But not only does it have lots of money being thrown at it – the system itself is also very adaptable and modern. Monaco is a very small country, which means that they can make changes which take effect overnight – in America, it is so big that things usually take generations to have any real impact, especially in areas like education. Many countries work on a standard, general, somewhat outdated system of education – in comparison, Monaco adapts its system to the current social and political climate, which provides their students with a really firm grasp on the current landscape around them, using modern teaching methods. Currently, their curriculum is based around languages, to further intercultural communication, and business, so subjects like history, economics, maths, politics and marketing are particularly valued. This sets these children up with a very solid background as they go into the world and take up positions of leadership and management, as they have been very well-equipped by their education system, more so than other systems which aim to give a broader form of education to their students which encompasses a wide variety of subjects equally.