AI & Tech Camp at École des Roches, Normandy

Workshops are practical: students understand intelligent machines by building them. There are two pathways. Ages 11 to 14 build and program robots with AlphAI, mBot and LEGO Spike. Ages 15 to 17 work in Python on machine learning, data and automation. Groups hold 12 to 15 students and work in the school's technology labs. This programme has no separate language lessons; sessions are run in English and French.

The fee covers tuition, full boarding and all meals, the activity programme, four excursions per two-week session, and standard transfers to and from Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on the changeover Sunday that opens and closes the stay. Standard transfers cover flights arriving between 11:00 and 15:00 on changeover Sundays; any other arrangement is charged as an extra. Two-week sessions can be combined into stays of two, three, four, six or eight weeks.

Students board on campus in recently renovated historic houses. Rooms hold four to eight students, houses are single-sex and grouped by age, and experienced house parents live in each residence. Each house has social lounges, a fitness suite, a cinema room and a kitchen.

Full board: three meals a day, prepared on campus by professional chefs from fresh Normandy produce. All dietary requirements are catered for.

Afternoons and evenings are given to swimming, team sports, climbing walls, visual arts, music and dance, and each session closes with a themed disco night. Four excursions are included in every two-week session — cultural visits to Parisian landmarks, Versailles, Monet's gardens, the D-Day landing beaches and historic cathedrals and châteaux, and adventure days such as Disneyland Paris, treetop climbing, natural parks and the Normandy coast.

The campus covers 50 hectares at Verneuil d'Avre et d'Iton in Normandy, about an hour from Paris; the school was founded in 1899. Facilities include five tennis courts, a golf range with chipping green, an electric go-kart track, technology labs, sports grounds, and the boarding houses with their social lounges, fitness suites and cinema rooms.

More than 30 nationalities share the campus each summer. Pastoral care runs around the clock: house parents live in the residences, and staff meet students at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport and travel with them to campus on changeover Sundays.