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This article explores the ways in which different language ideologies manifest themselves in the English agrégation (competitive exam) in France, showing how they contribute to the construction of the (socio)linguistic object named “English” in this context. Bringing together tools from sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology and discourse analysis, I analyse a corpus of Agrégation jury reports and show how native-speakerism, national, standard language and raciolinguistic ideologies, as well as ideologies of coherence and purism, all play a role in shaping a set of ideal(ised) models of English – and thus of English speakers – in this context. The article concludes by suggesting that, given the influence of the Agrégation in France, the phenomena observed here may contribute to elaborating what goes by the name of “English” in French education, and in France, more generally.