After attending top schools in Paris, he passed through the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), the graduate school for generations of senior French officials.

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Nikini, who went to King Edward VI High School (for girls), had taken French, maths, further maths and classical civilisation - a subject in which she came in the top five in the country.

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She is ahead of Gwladys Nocera and the French golfer is in California preparing for this week's LPGA pre-qualifying school.

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Take for example, the coaching undertaken by Christophe Haag, an associate professor at the French business school, EM Lyon.

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Staff at a London-based Islamic research body, the Institute for Ismaili Studies, have ranged from radicals like Mohammed Arkoun, a leader of the French deconstructionist school, to traditional Sunni or Sufi scholars.

ECONOMIST: Muslims and the Koran

Her examples included the inspiration behind California cuisine, the reasons fewer chefs are going to France for training, and her decision to change the name of her cooking school from the French Culinary Institute.

FORBES: Can the French Protect and Promote Their Brand?

Now he and Hochberg, a former IBM computer scientist who teaches Spanish and French at a magnet high school in Yonkers, find their collection has reached a point where it pays for its own expansion.

FORBES: Red Eye

In a report published Thursday by the World Economic Forum and the French business school INSEAD, Sweden placed first in a global ranking of countries in terms of their readiness for tech business, compared with a second place ranking in 2009.

FORBES: Magazine Article

French-Singaporean school Insead shoots up seven places to third, a rise assisted by the fact it has, for the first time, an eligible EMBA program, rated ninth in the world and fifth in Europe by the FT.

CNN: Europe's very best