Dans « l’école », l’apostrophe remplace une lettre.

Because French usually avoids putting la or le directly before a word that begins with a vowel sound. Instead, the article is shortened:

• la école → l’école
• le ami → l’ami

This is called elision. The apostrophe shows that a vowel from the article has been dropped.

In this case, école is a feminine noun, so the full article would be la.
So:

• la école → l’école

The apostrophe shows that the a of la has been removed.

No. The apostrophe is only a writing mark. It shows that a letter has been omitted, but it has no sound of its own.

So l’école is pronounced smoothly as one unit, not with any pause where the apostrophe appears.

You have to know the gender of the noun.

• If the noun is masculine, l’ may stand for le
• If the noun is feminine, l’ may stand for la

Since école is feminine, l’école means la école in underlying form, shortened by elision.

Yes. École is a feminine noun, so it normally takes feminine articles and adjectives:

• une école
• l’école
• cette école

That is why the hidden full form behind l’école is la école, not le école.

Mostly for pronunciation. Saying la école would sound awkward because two vowel sounds meet. French usually simplifies this by dropping the vowel of the article:

• la école → l’école
• le arbre → l’arbre

This makes speech flow more naturally.

No. Elision happens with several common words in French, especially before a vowel or a silent h. For example:

• je aime → j’aime
• ne est → n’est
• de accord → d’accord
• si il → s’il

So l’école is just one very common example of a larger pattern.

The é has an acute accent. It affects pronunciation and tells you that the vowel is pronounced like ay in many teaching approximations, though not exactly the same as English.

So école begins with an é sound, which is one reason elision happens: the word starts with a vowel sound.

Dans means in or inside. In this sentence, it introduces the example word:

• Dans l’école = In l’école

So the sentence is talking about what happens inside the written form l’école.

Those are French quotation marks, called guillemets.

French often writes quoted words like this:

• « l’école »

English usually uses:

• “l’école”

Both serve the same purpose here: they show that the sentence is talking about the word itself, not using it normally in a sentence.

For the same reason as in l’école. The noun apostrophe begins with a vowel sound, so the article is shortened:

• la apostrophe → l’apostrophe

Since apostrophe is feminine, the missing letter is again the a from la.

Just one letter. More exactly, it marks that the final vowel of a short word has been dropped.

In l’école:

• full form: la école
• shortened form: l’école

So the apostrophe marks the missing a, not the whole article la.