Foreword
The role and place of parents in schools is a recurring theme in education policy. For a long time, families were poorly integrated into the day-to-day life of schools, especially at secondary level. Parents had little access to schools. School-family relations were based on formal meetings, generally at the start of the school year, and more rarely on interim or end-of-year reviews. The flow of information was largely one-way, with the school dictating the pace and methods of communication. The school transmitted information (grades, behavior, summonses, orientation, etc.) via paper media such as notebooks, newsletters or letters. The flow of information was predominantly one-way, with the school dictating the pace and methods(IGESR, 2021).
Digital technology, with the deployment of digital workspaces (ENT) in the 2000s, and the concomitant rollout of school life software, has profoundly transformed school-family relations, both in terms of pace and methods. Parents now have direct access to course content, diaries, grades, homework and absences. In 2020, the health crisis marked an important turning point in the use of ENT to ensure pedagogical continuity.
While the digitization of the school-family relationship could tend to strengthen parental capacity to support homework, it should be noted that this is not without consequences: the possibility for parents to monitor schoolwork on a daily basis can increase pressure at school, with closer supervision, which is not always experienced positively by students, particularly those in difficulty or dropping out.
Teachers, for their part, may " feel that their work is being interfered with because of the access parents and their hierarchy have to some of their course content", observed the Cnesco in 2020. " They also feel a form of interference in their personal lives because of messaging, and they fear too much solicitation from students and/or parents".
In April 2024, the General Inspectorate for Education, Sport and Research (IGÉSR) was asked to analyze the impact of digital technology on relations between schools and families. In its report, the Inspectorate looks back at the deployment of ENTs, in conjunction with school life software such as Pronote. The Inspectorate's assessment of ENT is fairly positive. However, it is concerned about the quasi-monopolistic position of a private publisher in the school life software market. This dominant position " could undermine the Ministry's efforts to regulate digital services, particularly in conjunction with private players". It also identifies a whole series of difficulties resulting from the multiplicity of players (Ministry, local authorities, private publishers) and their difficulty in coordinating themselves : "functional overlaps between certain services, the use of multiple identifiers, a source of confusion for families and pupils, but also additional assistance work on the part of educational staff".
The inspectorate warns of the intensive use of ENT and school life software, particularly outside school hours. It recommends the implementation of a right to disconnect (no new publications between 8pm and 7am, or during weekends and vacations).
Pointing out that the families furthest away from digital technology have difficulty accessing or understanding ENT, the inspectorate recommends mobilizing departmental councils, associations, digital advisors and France Services, as well as family allowance funds, as part of an "educational alliance", to maintain and develop this support in all regions.
Finally, it concludes with 16 measures to restore coherence to the development of ENT and school life software, to remove obstacles to their use, to support parents who are far removed from digital technology, and to correct the sometimes stressful use of these tools.
Références :
99% of public high schools, 89% of public middle schools and 62% of public schools offer an ENT.
The first digital workspaces (ENT) saw the light of day in the early 2000s, under the impetus of the French Ministry of Education.
ENTs centralize numerous services for students, parents, teachers and administrators:
- access to teaching resources (courses, exercises, documents, etc.) ;
- communication tools (messaging, forums, videoconferencing, etc.) ;
- administrative management (student enrolment, canteen payments, etc.) ;
- individual student monitoring (absences, behavior, grades and report cards).
ENTs are funded by the départements for collèges, and by the regions for lycées. In schools, organization and funding vary from region to region. An ENT market has thus emerged, with several publishers offering solutions in line with a master plan (SDET). The relatively abundant range of ENT solutions offered by different publishers has gradually become concentrated around four vendors, who now share the bulk of the ENT market.
By the start of the 2024 school year, 99% of public lycées, 89% of public collèges and 62% of public schools will offer an ENT.
92% of secondary school students and 64% of primary school students and their parents have access to an ENT.
According to the IGESR, "ENTs are now essential for communicating with families".
The report by the General Inspectorate for Education, Sport and Research (IGESR) gives a rather positive assessment of ENTs: "These tools played a decisive role during the health crisis in ensuring educational continuity. (...) In primary schools, the first uses of ENTs were put in place during the crisis, without a regulated framework, and most subsequently confirmed their use with the deployment of a qualified ENT solution. Videoconferencing services, which were rarely found in ENTs before the health crisis, have since been used by schools to offer conferences or hybrid meetings. Videoconferencing, also democratized by the widespread use of teleworking in society, has become a means used by some school heads to ensure greater participation by parents in various information or awareness-raising meetings (initially created in 2003 with a pedagogical objective), and has led to an intensification of usage around a shared objective: ensuring pedagogical continuity. Once the health crisis had passed, the ENT remained an integral part of the educational landscape, and its use did not decline, but actually increased.
"ENTs are now indispensable in the life of schools and for communication with families, and are recognized as such. The critical view that may be taken of them, and more generally of the relationship with digital technology and screens, does not call into question their legitimacy, but rather the place they should be given in the service of a pedagogical and educational project. What's more, perfecting the tool is a clearly identified asset, which can be put to good use in the event of future crises.
"Compared to other communication vectors (social networks, private messaging) often used by staff, parents and students, for convenience, or by reflex, and without measuring the risks, the ENT also offers, in the opinion of those heard, a trusted, secure environment that meets the requirements of the RGPD and is the subject of contractualization between the players based on protective specifications."
The emergence of a dominant player in the digital school-family relationship
While the regions and départements were concentrating their efforts and funding on deploying ENTs, designed primarily as a portal, a unified entry point giving access to a wide range of services, school heads were obtaining timetabling software from other publishers (such as Index Education), which was supplied neither by the ENT publishers nor by the Ministry.
By extending the functionalities of EDT software to include school life management (absences, late arrivals, report cards) and integrating them into ENTs (with the agreement of local authorities), school life software publishers (first and foremost Pronote, developed by Index Education) have gained a foothold in the ENT market. Software has gradually become the main vehicle for school-family relations, eclipsing the other services offered by ENTs.
"Two publishers, Index Éducation and Aplim, have a majority, if not a virtual monopoly, of the school life software market, which is in fact a platform accessible in web mode and via a mobile application".
Back in 2020, the Cour des Comptes (French National Audit Office) expressed concern about the growing power of Index Education: " The predominance of a private publisher creates a strong relationship of dependence between this company and schools, each of which is a client of the same software solution. In addition to the financial aspects, there is the question of access to and protection of student data.
This concern was echoed by the IGESR in 2025: " Pronote, with its quasi-monopolistic position as a school life software, runs the risk of becoming the dominant player in the digital relationship between schools and families".
In particular, the IGESR points to a number of pricing practices.
- Index Education reportedly "imposes an interoperability fee on schools for the exchange of data from its software when an ENT other than its own solution is implemented within the school, with additional costs deemed significant by schools".
- SMS text messaging has become an increasingly popular way for schools to reach families, notably to notify parents of a pupil's absence (individual SMS), to remind parents of important meetings or to communicate in emergency or crisis situations (SMS to all or some parents). According to the IGESR, Index Education's SMS rates are " almost 60% more expensive than the rates available to the Ministry for SMS broadcasting (...) Lower-cost alternatives exist, but cannot be directly coupled with Pronote ". The IGESR adds that " due to the high cost of SMS and its impact on the school budget , particularly in secondary schools, some school heads have severely restricted or abandoned the use of SMS".
" This central role," concludes the IGESR, " may undermine the Ministry's efforts to regulate digital services, particularly in relation to private players. In addition, certain data entered by schools in EDT and Pronote software are necessary for the operation of ENTs in secondary schools. These include pedagogical organization, timetables and information for the news dashboard. The Ministry would do well to establish a framework for all players (local authorities, publishers, school heads) that defines data circulation, promotes interoperability and is enforceable".
Référence :
An abundance of tools, a need for coherence
In 2023, when it published its digital strategy for education, the French Ministry of Education drew up an assessment of the difficulties encountered in using the digital tools offered by the education ecosystem: " complex and heterogeneous interfaces, unattractive, sometimes far removed from standards, unequally accessible and hardly adapted to mobility, a lack of data portability requiring multiple re-entries, connection breaks between tools, insufficient performance, etc. This situation (... ) translates directly into the quality of service offered, with a digital offering fragmented between multiple portals or online services operated by the State (Scolarité services portal, etc.), the various levels of government (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Education, etc.) and the different levels of the education system. This situation (...) is directly reflected in the quality of the service offered, with a digital offering split between multiple portals or online services operated by the State (Scolarité services portal), the various levels of local authorities and different public and private operators (school life software in particular). This multiplicity of tools creates a labyrinthine and uncertain path, to the detriment of usage, confidence and freedom of choice for certain digital resources. We need to work together to remove these obstacles.
To structure this abundant offering, the Ministry of Education was counting on the deployment of unified authentication via ÉduConnect (with the objective of 100% of students using their ÉduConnect identity to access digital educational tools and resources by the start of the 2026 school year.
Two years later, the IGESR updated this diagnosis, identifying a whole series of difficulties resulting from the multiplicity of players (ministry, local authorities, private publishers) and their difficulty in coordinating their efforts.
- "The deployment of ENT, without a national master plan, may have caused perplexity and confusion. confusion for parents, who are sometimes obliged to manage two or three different ENTs depending on their children's level of schooling".
- "Sometimes confusing user paths Historically, ENT was accessed via a browser from a computer, but since 2010 the emergence of mobile uses, and more recently mobile applications, has led to a fragmentation that is difficult for players to follow. The cohabitation of the ENT mobile application and the Pronote application can generate flows of communications, information and requests in one or other of the applications, or in both. This juxtaposition of two mobile applications has caused ENT to lose its role as an aggregator, providing access to different services from a single point".
- " Functional overlaps between certain servicesSome schools have tried to solve this problem by communicating exclusively with parents via Pronote. While some schools have tried to solve this problem by communicating exclusively with parents via Pronote, they have done so by foregoing certain essential functions, such as the ENT messaging system, which is generally considered to be more efficient, particularly for sending attachments".
- " the use of multiple identifiers, a source of confusion for families and students but also an additional workload for educational staff. (...) The implementation of EduConnect in an ENT is in the hands of local authorities or publishers. However, some local authorities wish to maintain their own ENT identity, while some schools decide not to implement the local authority's ENT, even though it is linked to EduConnect, and deploy Pronote alone. In all cases, the decision not to link the school's digital services to the EduConnect identity deprives parents and students of simplified, secure access to all services".
The IGESR calls for "tools to be made consistent (...) around a simplified user path that brings together the various services that make up an ENT, including those for school life and national education teleservices, so as to facilitate access. The DGESCO, the DNE, the academic regions and local authorities must ensure that the user path and services are coherent, in association with family representatives and publishers/integrators".
EduConnect is one of the levers of this coherence: "A single identity is needed for parents and students to access all services. EduConnect must be deployed by all ENT projects in public schools and educational establishments. Academic regions must work with local authorities to achieve this.
Référence :
Parents away from the digital world: "Still not enough answers".
The deployment of ENT was confronted very early on with the case of the families furthest away from digital technology. " The health crisis highlighted the importance of "everyday inequalities" in digital technology: quality of connections and their constraints (such as blocked packages), absence or low quality of equipment, intra-family sharing of equipment, poor mastery of communication tools with teachers"(Digital Strategy for Education).
It seems "contradictory and problematic that parents who most often need help for their children cannot access the information intended for them because of the infrastructure and the existence of a digital divide between school and home" observed the CNESCO in 2020.
The IGESR, for its part, notes "a significant digital divide, particularly marked in REP, REP+ and vocational high schools, and overall in schools whose social position index (IPS62) is low and below the national average ... Socio-economic fragility can be coupled with linguistic and cultural fragility. This is the case for some allophone families, who are more exposed to this double fragility, which can exacerbate their numerical insecurity".
"Faced with such situations (which can vary in severity depending on the school), schools, local authorities and associations have all tried to find solutions. The IGESR lists a large number of local initiatives (equipment grants, information or mediation meetings, support for parents) as well as national ones, such as the Digital Kit. The inspectorate draws lessons from the Territoires numériques éducatifs (TNE) policy implemented since 2021 in a dozen départements. "The TNEs demonstrated the difficulty of reaching and raising awareness among parents, and the pitfalls encountered when deploying the digital parenting component. But this deployment (with an overall budget of €7 million) has enabled us to experiment with and develop model practices and organizations."
As part of an "educational alliance", the mission recommends mobilizing departmental councils, associations (Ligue de l'enseignement, CEMEA, family associations), digital advisors and France Services, as well as family allowance funds, to maintain and develop this support in all regions.
"In view of the multiple difficulties encountered by families furthest from digital resources and skills, the IGESR calls for " interministerial governance of support for digital parenting, to which the Ministry of Education must contribute on the school and educational side (...) This policy could be led by the ministry in charge of the family, and rely on the coordination of a range of contributors for greater coherence and effectiveness".
The right to disconnect
Despite the widely-acknowledged benefits of ENT, the IGESR mission was alerted by numerous testimonials "to the untimely and sometimes inappropriate use of the tools, generating stress on all sides and showing less respect not only for the privacy to which everyone aspires, but also for the preservation of health, which is necessary for everyone".
This is the case, for example, when parents find out about grades at the same time as pupils, sometimes even before the latter have received a correction or handed in their copy. This can lead to tensions within the family, especially when the mark is perceived as unsatisfactory and the student finds it difficult to explain the criteria used to assess it.
It's mainly the question of the right to disconnect that emerges. Some teachers include assignments in their textbooks that have not been indicated in class, and may appear in the evening for the following day, at the weekend for Monday, or in the middle of school vacations. On the other hand, national education staff would also like to see a framework for evening and weekend requests from parents and pupils.
Except in cases of extreme urgency, the report recommends that digital tools be set up so that updates and notifications are interrupted after 7 p.m. and resumed at 70:30 the next morning, and that notifications are not received during school vacations.
Pix parents: a new tool for digital parenting
Since 2021, all French secondary school students have been certifying their digital skills with Pix.
Pix is now turning its attention to parents, with the launch of new themed courses on digital parenting: short modules to assess your skills in a variety of situations, and to tackle subjects such as parental control, social networks, cyberbullying prevention, or even your children's orientation with ParcourSup, for example. Nine thematic courses are now available online.
Read more : Pix parents: a new tool for digital parenting
