Reunion

Réunion (French: Réunion or formally La Réunion; previously Île Bourbon) is a French island of about 800,000 population located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) south west of Mauritius, the nearest island.

Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas départements of France. Like the other overseas departments, Réunion is also one of the 26 regions of France (being an overseas region) and an integral part of the Republic with the same status as those situated on the European mainland.

Réunion is an outermost region of the European Union and, as an overseas department of France, is part of the Eurozone. Due to its location in a time zone to the east of Europe, Réunion was the first region in the world where the euro became legal tender.

Its population is 827,000.

The capital is Saint-Denis.

Administratively, Réunion is divided into 4 arrondissements, 24 cantons, and 24 communes. It is a French overseas département as well as a French region.

Réunion is a member of the Indian Ocean Commission. It is very similar in culture, ethnic makeup, language and traditions to Mauritius and the Seychelles. Réunion contains most of the same ethnic populations as Mauritius but in different proportions.

French is the only official language of Réunion . Although not official, Réunion Creole is also commonly spoken by the majority of the population. One can hear it in many places, but education takes place only in French. Tamil is taught as an optional language in some schools. Due to the diverse population, other languages such as Mandarin, Hakka and Cantonese are also spoken by members of the Chinese community, but fewer people speak these languages as younger generations start to converse in French. The number of speakers of Indian languages (mostly Urdu and Gujarati) is also dropping sharply. Arabic is taught in mosques and spoken by a small community of Arabs.

Education

There seems to be no easy to find information on schools in Réunion. One assume that the approach taken is similar to that in Metropolitan France.

Higher education

The l'Université de La Réunion (University of La Réunion) seems to be the only university in Réunion. It has grown considerably in the last 20 years, from 2,000 to 12,000 students. There are three campuses: most students are in the Saint-Denis campus, in the North of the island, but the South Colleges in Saint-Pierre and Le Tampon have seen a sharp increase in student numbers since their creation.

There is an informative web site in English at http://www.univ-reunion.fr/universite_en.html

Note that the university has strong international links - see http://www.univ-reunion.fr/international_en.html

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