Experts of French exercise a school head embraces (6)
I believe the answer is:
adepts
'experts' is the definition.
(adept is a kind of expert)
'of french exercise a school head embraces' is the wordplay.
'of french' becomes 'de'.
'exercise' becomes 'pt' (**).
'head' indicates taking the first letters.
'embraces' is an insertion indicator.
The initial letter of 'school' is 's'.
'a'+'s'='as'
'de'+'pt'='dept'
'dept' going into 'as' is 'ADEPTS'.
(Other definitions for adepts that I've seen before include "Virtuosos, hotshots" , "People with talent" , "Pasted by experts" , "Pasted in by very skilful people" , "Pasted by skilled people" .)