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[File] Digital education: "What do we know today about the place and use of digital in schools?"

The Department of Evaluation, Forecasting and Performance (DEPP) of the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports has undertaken to take stock of "what is known today about the place and use of digital technology in schools".This summary is based on a decade of studies, on recent publications by the DEPP and on evaluations of several schemes set up to develop the role of digital technology in education (D'COL, the Collèges connectés, and more recently the Plan numérique). The evolution of digital equipment in schools The number of students per computer has declined sharply over the past decade in the first grade and in college: in kindergarten, the number of students per computer decreased from 25.3 to 15.9 students per computer between 2009 and 2019 ; Over the same period, it dropped from 11.6 to 6.9 in elementary school and from 8.1 to 3 in middle school; In high school, the indicator has remained relatively stable since 2010, due to an already high equipment rate (it went from 3.1 to 2.3 between 2010 and 2019). Digital technology is becoming more and more important for schools, which are increasingly equipped: computers but also tablets, interactive digital boards, overhead projectors, etc. The number of interactive digital boards has increased, for example, from 2 per 1000 students in elementary schools in 2009 to 17 per 1000 students in 2019. In middle schools, it has increased from 3 per 1,000 students to 17.7 per 1,000 students over the same period.In addition, the DEPP observes a strong increase in the percentage of establishments and schools whose project makes reference to information and communication technologies. Digital-related teaching practices: frequency, sense of effectiveness, and training needs While teachers largely use digital tools to prepare their lessons (94% for primary and 88% for secondary education), fewer use them to guide classroom sessions (50% and 70% respectively) and even fewer let students use ICT for projects or class work (14% and 36% respectively).A survey had specifically focused in 2019 on the pedagogical practices implemented in the teaching of mathematics. In 2019, the digital tool most used by 9th graders in mathematics was the calculator: 56% of teachers said that they "very often" had their students work with a calculator, while only 3 to 5% said that they "very often" used dynamic geometry software, a spreadsheet or even an online exercise bank. Less pedagogical integration of digital tools by teachers Periodic Survey of Education (PSDE) data indicate that "the pedagogical use of digital technology is considered the lowest priority and least feasible practice by college professors, and also stands out as the least widespread pedagogical practice." The use of digital technology by teachers in primary schools is even lower than in secondary schools; however, the degree of priority is comparable in both schools. Teachers are increasingly trained in digital technology as part of their initial training In 2018, 53% of elementary classroom teachers (and 51% of middle school teachers) reported that their pre-service training addressed the use of ICTThis finding masks, however, disparities according to the date of graduation: Only 21% of school teachers who graduated before 1996 report having dealt with digital technology as part of their initial training, compared to 85% of those who graduated after 2008; In secondary education, only 18% of teachers who graduated before 1996 indicate that they had dealt with digital technology during their initial training, whereas 74% of those who graduated after 2008 did so. But often dissatisfied with this training The DEPP also observes differences in teacher satisfaction with their initial training, depending on the date of graduation, seniority and territory of practice. "Thus, teachers with less seniority (less than 5 years) are more likely than those with more seniority to feel very satisfied with their initial training in terms of content related to digital education (in both primary and secondary education), but also more likely to attend in-service training in this area in primary education.Despite the changes that have taken place in initial training, only 25% of those who said they had dealt with the use of ICTE in this way were satisfied with their preparation for this subject in primary education, compared with 47% in secondary education.In-service digital training can compensate for the limitations of initial training: only 34% of French primary school teachers and 50% of secondary school teachers had participated in ICTE-related training in the past 12 months, according to a survey conducted in 2018."The limitations mentioned in terms of training may explain why pedagogical practices using digital technology for learning are underdeveloped. [....] It could be that the use of ICT in the classroom, as a new teaching method, is held back by the low level of feeling of preparation in this field . Students' digital skills Students today are clearly "connected" students with a significant likelihood of having their own cell phone (smartphone many times) and/or digital tablet.83% of parents of middle and high school students said that their child had his/her own phone at the time of the lockdown, 45% had his/her own computer and 24% had his/her own tablet.However, the possession of personal digital tools by students seems to differ according to the social origin of the parents and their school. For example, 34% of students in private schools have their own computer, compared to 26% of students in priority education schools. French students' digital skills are average compared to international surveys According to the International Computer and Information Literacy Study ( ICILS ) 2018 assessment by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), France scores an average of 499 in digital literacy, just slightly above the international average of countries participating in the survey."This score means that, on average, students know how to use a computer for the basic tasks of collecting and managing information. However, it is important to note that only 40% of French students reach this level. They know how to make simple changes and add content to existing digital documents. They also know how to create simple information documents by respecting the rules of page-setting. They demonstrate knowledge of information protection mechanisms. These results undermine the "digital native" myth that students from recent generations who grew up in an environment marked by the development of the Internet and new technologies would find it easier to use digital technology. The ICILS assessment also looks at computational thinking. "France obtains an average score of 501, one point above the international average. This means that, on average, French students are able to implement simple solutions to real problems on the computer. The greater presence of digital tools in the daily lives of young people is not always associated with progress in learning, comments the DEPP: "This is due in particular to the fact that the tasks required in school learning differ from the tasks performed by students in their personal use of tools. Indeed, they use digital tools (phone, tablet, computer) mainly to send messages, connect to social networks, play or watch videos. In a school setting, if digital tools are used at all, it is more for research, creating written documents or oral presentations, or for computer programming. In both first and second grades, girls score better, on average, than boys. On the other hand, vocational education students are over-represented in the lowest performing groups and under-represented in the highest performing groups. The same is true for students from schools with a low social position index. (These results are confirmed by the international ICILS assessment). A nuanced assessment of three recent schemes Several studies in the international literature suggest that the use of digital technology in the classroom promotes the development of cross-curricular skills (perseverance, self-confidence, autonomy, curiosity, etc.) identified as assets for academic success but also for future "success.The DEPP relies here on the results of three schemes set up with the aim of developing the place of digital technology in teaching and learning: D'COL, the Collèges connectés, and the 2015 Digital Plan. D'COL, a digital aid system for students in difficulty in the sixth grade, deployed in vocational schools: "Although the system does not have an overall effect on the learning of students as a whole, D'COL does seem to improve the results of the weakest students, mainly in math and English. The teaching teams, as well as the students involved in the program, believe that it fosters autonomy, self-confidence and motivation in the students. The "Connected Colleges" program was implemented in September 2013. At the national level, 72 colleges were selected to benefit from specific investments and support to enable them to integrate digital technology more widely into their teaching and school life. "The integration of digital technology into teaching and school life seems to be closely linked to the actual equipment of the colleges, the actions of the head teacher, the support that teachers receive, and their perception of digital technology in general and its use in their profession. "More teachers in the first phase of connected middle schools have their students use digital tools in class. This regular use of digital tools in class by students goes hand in hand with a more frequent implementation of "active" teaching practices, emphasizing experimental activities, promoting group work or differentiation. 2015 Digital Plan for Education: the main component of this plan was the distribution, via calls for projects, of mobile digital equipment (mainly tablets) to secondary schools for individual or collective use, in class and/or at home. These tablets were distributed individually to students (individual mobile equipment - EIM) or collectively to schools in the form of mobile classes (CM). At the end of the 5th grade, we observed a positive effect of the individual mobile equipment on the students' results in oral comprehension of French and on their digital skills. At the end of the fourth grade, the results of the students benefiting from the MIS also show a positive evolution in written comprehension of French and in mathematics compared to the non-equipped students. A positive impact of the Mobile Classrooms can also be observed on the mathematical and numerical skills of 4th grade students at the end of the school year. The availability of individual mobile equipment leads teachers to integrate digital technology more into their professional practices, while the availability of a mobile classroom has no effect.   The DEPP note provides a very detailed bibliography in the appendix. The datasets on which it is based are in open data on data.education.gouv.fr.

• Inclusion

Published on 20/01/22



[Feature] Back to school 2023: what strategy for digital education?

As every year, the back-to-school circular from the French Minister of Education describes the priorities and new features that will come into effect from September onwards: reinforcement of media and information education, which will include " knowledge of rights and duties in the digital space and of the risks linked in particular to the use of social networks ", and "development of digital skills (...) with the roll-out of "Pix sixième" to all collèges".In addition, 2023 will see the implementation of the Digital Strategy for Education 2023-2027, published last January. This strategy has since been translated into a technical doctrine, based on a platform approach.With a view to reinforcing teacher training, a specific Pix, called " Pix+ Édu ", has been tested in a number of regions to prepare for the future introduction of digital skills certification for teachers.Faced with the challenges of digital education, the French Ministry of Education plans to extend the digital awareness certificate ("Pix 6e") for 6th graders throughout France.With the advent of portable devices, high-speed Internet access and e-learning platforms, the question arises as to the future of computer rooms. Educational communities and local authorities (responsible for the digital equipment of schools) are faced with a number of challenges: the high cost and maintenance of computer rooms, limited mobility for students and teachers, changes in learning methods, the integration of technology into ordinary classrooms... Digital strategy for education 2023-2027In January 2023, the French Ministry of Education released a digital strategy for education 2023-2027. The ambition of this document is to define the strategic vision of digital for education in France, for the period 2023-2027 "It aims to get the players to agree on a common vision, on unprecedented transformations, which will be to lead and succeed together."In particular, the authors of the strategy note that "unequal access to digital technology " This can create difficulties for people who are digitally excluded or who have great difficulty accessing it. "This can create difficulties for people who are digitally excluded or who have great difficulty accessing it. (...) These difficulties of access to digital technology create inequalities in learning and place the issues of digital inclusion and equal access to the public digital education service at the forefront".They also point to " a degraded user experience ". " Teachers, students, families or all education staff report difficulties 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, lack of portability, data requiring multiple re-entries, connection breaks between tools, insufficient performance (...) These obstacles are all the more difficult for users to overcome as they are offered a significant proliferation of digital tools and resources without their uses being clarified, nor their access facilitated".The Digital Education Strategy for 2023-2027 aims to address several challenges:Strengthen national and local cooperation between education players, around pedagogical projects mobilizing digital technology where relevant;Developing students' digital skills;Provide teachers with a clear offer, combining digital tools and resources to put digital technology at the service of student success;Develop the robustness, security, accessibility, quality and eco-responsibility of the Ministry's IT tools, to simplify the work of its employees and thus enhance the quality of the service provided. A 4-pronged strategyThe strategy is based on 4 axes, each with several key actions.An ecosystem committed to a shared public policy:Strengthen governance of digital education at national and local levels ;Share indicators for steering and evaluation purposes ;Define typical individual student equipment (middle and high school);Digital education that develops citizenship and digital skills;Ensure the acquisition of digital skills throughout the school career ;Enable students to become informed citizens in the digital age.An educational community supported by a reasoned, sustainable and inclusive digital offering:Supporting the development of digital commons;Simplify access to digital services by creating a "resource account";Putting digital technology at the service of inclusive schools;Better training for educational teams in digital teaching methods.Supporting teachers in digital education:Organize digital educational services around an interoperable platform ;Mobilizing data for the school.New rules for a ministerial information system at the service of its usersAccelerating digital transformation;Increase efficiency by expanding and supporting pooling;Improve fluidity and quality by integrating the principles of agility and user experience;Developing eco-responsibility.To achieve all these objectives, the Ministry of Education intends to renew its partnership with local authorities, which "provide material resources such as infrastructure and terminals, install and maintain them, and increasingly finance teaching resources ". This partnership will have to " take account of technological developments, notably the omnipresence of cloud-hosted solutions, hardware (smartphones, tablets, laptops, interactive and immersive media), and the emergence of ENTs (digital workspaces). We also need to understand the "out-of-school" dimension of digital education. This new partnership needs to be forged at different levels - academies and regions, academic departments and départements, inter-municipalities, basins and communes". Supporting the development of digital commonsThe digital strategy devotes a chapter to the "digital commons". By this it means "a set of digital resources produced and managed by a community. By their very nature, they are shared and collective". It mentions several tools available to teachers:The apps education.fr service platform, which provides collaboration and communication tools such as " virtual classrooms " and video-agents, as well as file-sharing and video-publishing tools hosted on French infrastructures.The Éléa platform, based on open-source Moodle software, which enables teachers to create and share open educational resources and scripted digital learning paths for their students.The "Magistère" platform, which provides teachers and all Ministry staff with a wide catalog of online training resources."This first version of the national offering will be enhanced according to a roadmap agreed with all players, local authorities and EdTech companies."Teachers, particularly at NSI or SNT, are waiting for a "forge" that would enable them to collaborate with peers and share computer code. The Ministry has announced the availability of a forge that is technologically sovereign and shared nationwide. A technical doctrine for digital educationFollowing on from the strategy, in May 2023 the French Ministry of Education published a " technical doctrine for digital education ", "to establish a framework of common architecture and rules, aimed at providing users with a legible and structured set of simply accessible and interoperable educational digital services".Towards an open, interoperable ecosystemThis technical doctrine takes into account the accelerated growth in the use of digital educational services in the 1st and 2nd degrees since 2020. "More and more are being used, not only for administrative purposes and to keep track of schooling, but also for pedagogical activities and to implement educational missions. The logical corollary is a consequent increase in the use of services, which requires both perfect control of data and an open, interoperable ecosystem".A platform logicThe idea is for the State to guarantee " every player in education equal access to and simple use of digital services in a secure, open and interoperable ecosystem, for the purposes of implementing learning within the framework of the programs and skills repositories of the Ministry of National Education ". To this end, "digital education must be developed according to a platform logic, in the sense of a set of players respecting an architecture framework and common rules and standards, to provide users with a legible and structured set of services that are easily accessible and interoperable (...).) The public education service thus gains in agility, enabling users and companies in the digital education industry to benefit from innovative services, but also in sovereignty, by excluding any solution that does not respect the rules laid down, particularly in terms of ethics and data protection".Lastly, the technical doctrine refers to three standards currently being drawn up, dedicated to interoperability, security and digital responsibility requirements, which are intended to be enforceable by law". Pix+ Édu: towards certification of teachers' digital skillsAlmost all education staff use digital technology to prepare their lessons ( Profetic 2018 survey).Only 16% of primary school teachers and 29% of secondary school teachers feel well or very well prepared for its use in their initial training(Cnesco 2021 study).With a view to strengthening teacher training, a specific Pix, called " Pix+ Édu ", has been tested in a few territories to prepare for the future introduction of the Pix+ EDU certification of teachers' digital skills.This self-assessment course enables teachers to take stock of their level of mastery of digital skills for teaching, and to access online training resources.Pix+ Édu covers transversal and professional digital skills, differentiated for 1st and 2nd grade. It takes the form of questions, with recommended tutorials. A digital awareness certificate starting in 6th gradeFaced with the challenges of digital education and, in particular, to raise awareness of the fight against cyberbullying, hate speech and illicit online content, the French Ministry of Education plans to extend the digital awareness certificate to all 6th graders.Nearly 110 volunteer middle schools experimented with it during the 2022-23 school year.In 2023-2024, " Pix 6e " will be extended to all middle schools.Pix 6ème gives rise to a certificate guaranteeing that pupils have benefited from this awareness-raising program. It includes a specific "protection and safety" pathway, which targets 4 skills:securing the digital environment ;protect personal data and privacy ;protecting health, well-being and the environment;prevent cyberbullying.Since the 2021-2022 school year, Pix has been generalized from the 5th grade onwards, with compulsory digital skills certification for students in 3e at collège and Terminale at lycée général, technologique et professionnel.

• Inclusion

• Citizenship

Published on 05/09/23



[File] Digital education at the start of the 2022 school year: an overview of current projects and new initiatives

ForewordAs every year, the back-to-school circular of the Minister of National Education describes the priorities and new features that will come into effect in September. With regard to digital education, the circular states that each school or institution must "update the educational continuity plans developed and implemented since 2020" . It announces, in this regard, that a " permanent and sovereign solution of virtual classrooms accessible to all teachers will now be guaranteed throughout the year". "Faced with the challenge for our students to understand the digital world, and in particular to know how to analyze, sort, and distinguish between information that everyone can now be the sender as well as the receiver ", the circular provides for strengthening the effort in media and information education: "All teachers, especially those in charge of documentation, who are the pivotal point in secondary education, must sensitize and train students in this necessary distance, the first quality of an informed citizen. In this spirit, an experiment will be implemented in the sixth grade as of next fall via a digital awareness certificate.The health crisis and the implementation of educational continuity have made it necessary to set up a "basic digital foundation for schools, colleges and high schools". Within the framework of a "partners' committee" associating representatives of associations representing local authorities and the State "in the respect of the competences of each one", three guidelines for basic digital equipment in schools, colleges and high schools were discussed and then made public.This fall, we have a first evaluation of the program " Digital educational territories (TNE), launched in 2020, which should allow for large-scale testing of the implementation of educational continuity.As part of the " Numérique Inclusif, Numérique Éducatif" program launched in June 2021, 80 selected projects support the fight against digital and educational divides.As part of France 2030 (which takes over from the stimulus plan), a considerable investment effort (594 million euros) is devoted to the "Education and Digital" acceleration strategy. Contents State and local authorities agree on digital equipment bases for schools, colleges and high schools Digital education and inclusion: 80 projects to "reshuffle the deck What lessons can be learned from the "digital education territories" experiment? France 2030's education and digital strategy Towards a generalization of media and information literacy in schools The General Assembly on Digital Education, one year later, what is the interim assessment? "What do we know today about the place and use of digital in schools?" State and local authorities agree on digital equipment bases for schools, colleges and high schools Despite significant combined financial efforts, the deployment of the digital education public service has been very disparate and uneven across the country. " To remedy the persistent inequalities in access to the public digital service," the Cour des Comptes in its July 2019 report To remedy the persistent inequalities in access to digital public services," the Cour des Comptes recommended "providing schools, colleges and high schools with a basic digital foundation.The health crisis and the implementation of educational continuity have made it necessary to set up a "basic digital base for schools, colleges and high schools".Within the framework of a "partners' committee" associating representatives of associations representing local authorities and the State, "while respecting the competences of each", three guidelines for basic digital equipment in schools, middle schools and high schools were discussed and then made public.These guidelines detail, for each type of establishment (school, college and high school) a basic foundation: basic classroom equipment: a group viewing system and a classroom workstation; mobile equipment that can be shared for each school pack of touchscreen tablets (middle and high schools); equipment allowing the hybridization of courses in schools (high schools); equipment for "specific" classrooms (middle and high schools); the equipment of the establishment (documentation and information center, multimedia room, space for a media studio, duty room, teachers' room, "free" Internet access points for students (middle and high schools); support and training for teachers and educational teams in the use of new materials; the computer network ; access to the internet. These guidelines " are intended to help local authorities make their investments according to the level of equipment expected in their schools, colleges and high schools. They are not intended to be prescriptive, but rather to serve as a reference that can be adapted to the educational projects of the schools and the realities of the field. It is understood that the State, in its own areas of competence, will ensure, in particular, the training of teachers in the pedagogical uses of, and through, digital technology. Digital education and inclusion: 80 projects to "reshuffle the educational deckThe call for projects "Numérique Inclusif, Numérique Éducatif" (Inclusive Digital, Educational Digital) was launched by the Banque des Territoires in June 2021 to support projects to fight against these two divides: digital and educational. After two selection rounds, one in the fall of 2021 and the second in the spring of 2022, the 80 selected projects now cover the entire country.80 selected projectsTwo-thirds of the selected projects are led by associations, and a quarter by EdTech companies and local authorities. When the SSE structures are not themselves carriers of these projects, they are most of the time partners.40% of the target audiences are students, including 20% of disadvantaged youth. Parents and education professionals represent 19% and 16% of the target audiences respectively.In addition to providing financial support for these projects, the Banque des Territoires is also setting up a system of close support for the winners, which aims to assist the projects in their transition to a larger scale.Three convictions at the origin of the call for projectsThe Banque des Territoires emphasizes three beliefs that underlie this scheme. The first is that " the solutions already exist and, above all, that they come from the territories. France stands out because of the heterogeneity of its territory, and therefore the plurality of its challenges. It is often useless, or even counterproductive, to model a solution on a territory. The second is that "the players in the ecosystem are already working together. (...) . The players want to pool and create synergies, to have a better visibility of what exists so as not to reinvent but rather to act in a complementary manner. The call for projects was also intended to bring the players together and have them talk to each other - whether it be to carry out projects together or to share their good practices. The third is that " without working on the issues of inclusion, it is not possible to build effective and sustainable educational solutions. What lessons can be learned from the experimentation of the "educational digital territories" for pedagogical continuity?The program " Educational digital territories" program (TNE), launched in 2020 by the Ministry of National Education and the General Secretariat for Investment (SGPI) and implemented by the Banque des Territoires with partner local authorities, in association with the Réseau Canopé and the GIP Trousse à Projets, was intended to allow for large-scale testing of the implementation of educational continuity, the need for which had been revealed by the COVID-19 health crisis.The TNE evaluation report draws the first lessons from the experiments conducted in the departments of Aisne and Val-d'Oise during the 2020-2021 school year.Read more France 2030's education and digital strategyFrance 2030 is in line with the France Recovery Plan. This 30 billion euro investment plan is designed to make up for France's lag in certain historical sectors. It also aims to create new industrial and technological sectors.Endowed with 594 million euros as part of France 2030, the "Education and Digital" acceleration strategy must meet two imperatives: strengthen the skills and competencies needed to prepare for lifelong learning foster the development of a high-performance French digital education ecosystem It has several objectives: Increasing the efficiency of our education system by strengthening guidance tools, skills portfolios, labelled educational resources, assistance in personalising courses, and actions to reduce digital divides, strengthening the "Education and Digital" acceleration strategy. Transforming and strengthening the EdTech economy: "EdTech (Educational technology) represents a dynamic economic sector with a strong competitive edge in which major countries are investing massively (...) The health crisis has confirmed the need for many players to scale up to meet future demand. Provide a framework that preserves sovereignty and the ability to influence: "Beyond the immediate economic impact for French EdTech, the use of foreign digital solutions is synonymous with data capture. The protection of personal data and the sovereignty of our national education system are essential issues that must be preserved with sustainable and secure solutions. Actions launchedA "Priority Equipment and Research Program" (PEPR) for "Education and Digital Technology" with a budget of €77 million over 10 years will make it possible to create an educational data warehouse (Education Data Hub) capable of contributing to the data-driven management of schools and academies, as well as to the fine-tuning of teaching based on learning records and EdTech for existing and future resourcesDemonstrators that will test, accelerate and identify best practices to accelerate the use of digital in education: Territorial digital demonstrators" have been deployed for three years in schools (12 Educational Digital Territories) and in higher education (17 demonstrators covering 70 French higher education establishments) Demonstrators common to both school and higher education, such as Avenir(s) with a budget of €30 million, piloted by the ONISEP and the Savoie-Mont-Blanc University Educational solutions based on digital tools through Educational Challenges and Innovation Partnerships in Artificial Intelligence, or support for the deployment of E-FRAN projects. Initial and ongoing training in digital technology for teachers and staff who are accompanying the educational transformation with innovative training courses as part of the Skills and Professions of the Future call. Towards a generalization of media and information literacy in schoolsInscribed in the July 8, 2013 orientation and programming law, included in the Common Base of Knowledge and Skills and Culture in 2015, media and information literacy (MIE) has officially entered as such in the new National Education programs, after having long camped in its margins.In a analysis notethe Conseil national d'évaluation du système scolaire (Cnesco) observed, however, that the educational institution does not seem to " fully support young people in a changing information universe marked by strong debates around social networks and the infoxes that are propagated there. Thus, media education, as an object of study, is only addressed in half of the middle and high schools. This seems to be limited, most often, to education through the media (using information supports such as newspaper articles or television documentaries), even if, at school, students largely consider that moral and civic education courses (EMC) allow them to better understand current events.The Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports announces new initiatives to strengthen and generalize media and information literacy.Read more The General Assembly on Digital Education, one year later, what is the interim assessment?The Ministry of Education organized on November 4 and 5, 2020 the "Etats Généraux du Numérique pour l'éducation" (EGNé).These Estates General had been prepared in three stages: Development of feedback (from lockdown to end of regular school year); Organization of an online consultation (from mid-June to mid-September); States General in the territories (mid-September to mid-October). The digital education strategy defined at the end of the Etats généraux was based on three pillars: training, equipping and tools.Read more [Feature] "What do we know today about the place and use of digital in schools?"The Department of Evaluation, Forecasting and Performance (DEPP) of the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports has undertaken to take stock of "what is known today about the place and use of digital technology in schools ".This summary is based on a decade of studies, on recent publications by the DEPP and on evaluations of several schemes set up to develop the role of digital technology in education (D'COL, the Collèges connectés, and more recently the Plan numérique).Read more

• Inclusion

• Innovation

Published on 15/09/22



SNT in second year, NSI in first and last year: a change of scale in digital education in high school

With the creation, at the start of the 2019 school year, of a compulsory course in the second year of secondary school, "Digital Sciences and Technology" (NST ), and the creation, in the first and final years of secondary school, of the speciality course "Digital and Computer Sciences" (NSI), the teaching of digital technology in secondary school is changing scale.In the second year, the teaching of " Digital Sciences and Technology " concerns 560,000 students, 18,600 classes, i.e. 28,000 hours (without taking into account the duplication). At the start of the 2019 school year, 31,502 students in Première have chosen the new "Digital and Computer Sciences" specialization. "Digital sciences and technology": a generalized teaching for 560,000 students in the second year of secondary school Within the framework of the reform of the baccalaureate, a new teaching mandatory has been created in the general and technological second year. It replaces the (optional) exploration course in Computer Science and Digital Creation. This teaching has been generalized at the start of the school year in September 2019 to all French high schools for the second year classes.With a weekly duration of 1.5 hours, this teaching aims to allow students to grasp the main concepts of digital sciences, but also to allow students, based on a technological object, to understand the growing importance of digital technology and the resulting societal issues.This course is an extension of the teaching of algorithms, computer science and programming provided in secondary school in mathematics and technology. It deepens these notions and the practice of programming through activities related to the 7 themes of the program: Internet, the Web, social networks, structured data and their processing, location, cartography and mobility, embedded computing and connected objects, digital photography. 8% of first-year students chose the new specialty course "Numerics and Computer Science".At the start of the 2019 school year, 31,502 students chose to take the new "digital and computer science" specialization. This is all the more notable because this teaching is not yet offered by all schools, due to a lack of teachers trained in this discipline.8.1% of the 386,600 students in 1ère générale chose digital and computer science education: among them, six times more girls (2.6%) than boys (15.2%).On the other hand, the choice of "digital and computer sciences" is not very much determined by social origin: 8.4% of students from an advantaged social background chose this course, 7.7% of students from an average social background and 7% of students from a disadvantaged social background. Nearly 120,000 students in their final year of high school have taken a "computer science and digital science" course since 2013The "digital and computer sciences" specialization in the first and last years of high school (4 hours) replaces the "computer and digital sciences" specialization (2 hours per week). Introduced in 2012, this course was only offered to students in the terminale S. In 2018, it concerned 22,000 students (about 11.4%) in 1,231 high schools.In total, since 2013, nearly 120,000 Terminale S students have taken this course.In September 2016, the National Education had implemented an optional teaching " computer science and digital creation" (ICN) for the classes of première ES, L and S, extended in September 2017 to the classes of terminale ES and L.This teaching should "allow students to understand the logic and the stakes of information processing, to acquire a new mastery of the logic and concepts implemented in the digital domain, but also to mobilize the digital as a vector of creativity".The ICN exploration course in the second year of secondary school (1.5 hours per week) concerned 32,000 students (about 6%) in 1,172 high schools in 2018The optional ICN course (2 hours per week), intended for students in 1ère (L, ES and S series), and terminale (L and ES series), on the other hand, concerned only 3,650 students (0.7%) in 365 high schools.

• Inclusion

Published on 27/11/19



The "Numerics and Computer Science" specialization in the first and last years of secondary school suffers from a lack of appeal.

The reform of the baccalauréat has introduced a new speciality course in 2019: "Numérique et Sciences Informatiques" (NSI).The NSI specialization (four hours per week in première and six hours in terminale) has succeeded the previous Computer Science and Digital Science specialization (two hours per week) introduced in 2012, which was only offered to terminale S students.Today, this teaching is provided by teachers holding the CAPES NSI or the inter-university diploma "Enseigner l'informatique au lycée" ("Teaching computer science in high schools") to be introduced in 2019.Five years on, where do we stand? Only 10% of students opted for the NSI speciality in première and 4.3% in terminale. At the start of the 2023 school year, 38,091 first-year students chose the "digital and computer sciences" course, representing 10.1% of all students (compared with 34,721 in 2020, representing 9%). NSI ranks 8th among the most popular courses chosen in Première. At the start of the 2023 school year, 17,612 students were pursuing the NSI specialty in their final year, representing 4.3% of all students (13,884 in 2020, 3.7%). More than half of Première students who took the NSI specialization dropped out in Terminale In terminale, students have to give up one of the three speciality courses taken in première. With a 53% dropout rate, NSI is one of the most abandoned specialties, along with Latin-Greek and Engineering Sciences. A higher proportion of girls drop out of NSI in their final year. Four times as many boys as girls in Première, 7 times as many in TerminaleOnly 19.3% of students taking the NSI specialization in première are girls: their share drops to 15.2% in terminale. However, there is a slight downward trend, with the proportion of girls choosing NSI rising in première from 4.5% in 2020 to 4.2% in 2023. And in the final year, from 6.7% to 5.6%. Girls account for 56% of students in Terminale Générale. They are over-represented in the arts, Latin and Greek (79%), humanities, literature and philosophy-HLP (82%) and languages (73%). Conversely, they are under-represented in Engineering Sciences (14%), NSI (15%), Physical Education (32%) and, to a lesser extent, "Mathematics" (42%) and "Physics-Chemistry" (46%).The choice of NSI is largely determined by social background: among students who chose it in their final year, 41% were from a very privileged social background, 14% from a privileged social background, 23% from an average social background and 21% from a disadvantaged social background. A target of doubling the number of girls by 2027In its Avis sur la contribution du numérique à la transmission des savoirs et à l'amélioration des pratiques pédagogiques (Opinion on the contribution of digital technology to the transmission of knowledge and the improvement of teaching practices), the Conseil supérieur des programmes (CSP) recommended "promoting, particularly among young girls, the various aspects of computer science education , which is not limited to training future code developers and opens up varied and promising prospects for further study, particularly in data science and artificial intelligence".The CSP attributed girls' disaffection with computer science studies since the 1980s "to the weight of popular culture:on the one hand, when children began to buy personal computers, boys were favored over girls for a long time;on the other hand, the culture of a certain kind of computer use has helped to associate computing with the male world among the general public;finally, the image of the computer scientist, born of this association, is that of an asocial individual spending his time typing lines of code on a computer keyboard. More recently, the free software movement, with its predominantly male communities, has reinforced this bias by constructing the figure of the "snooper" (hacker) as a model of the developer".The Ministry's Digital Strategy for Education 2023-2027, adopted in 2023, proposes to "consolidate the momentum of the Numérique et sciences informatiques (NSI) specialization, particularly among young girls.the proportion of high schools offering the NSI specialty in situ will rise from 62% today to 75% by 2027;Specific initiatives to promote science, particularly digital science, will be carried out for high school girls in conjunction with research and higher education establishments;parity targets will be set for each academy, with a view to achieving parity in the NSI, with a minimum doubling of the proportion of girls by 2023". For Société Informatique de France, " there ' s a real danger here ".The trajectory of this teaching, the absence of NSI in a third of high schools and the low number of CAPES NSI and agrégation posts are of concern to the Société informatique de France."NSI's enrolments are insufficient - worse, they're stagnating. As early as 2020, we were alarmed by the low number of students choosing computer science. The revelation of the 2023 figures is worrying: enrolments are falling. Not only is this still far too low given the need for jobs in IT, and the need for IT literacy among future citizens, but NSI is also stagnating.While girls represent 55.6% of students, the rate of girls in NSI will be 15.2% in 2023. Do we really need to point out how despairing this statistic is? The increase on last year is 0.6 points. At this rate, the Ministry's target of 30% girls will be reached around... 2050. (...) After four years of existence, the NSI specialization has plateaued, to the point of falling to a very low level in the final year. At the lycée général, the situation is distressing (...)And yet, there are countless computer awareness programs, particularly aimed at women. Whether local or national, they remain ineffective, given the figures for NSI. Nor does orientation assistance seem to be any more effective. On the other hand, the change in the structure of the high school has led to drastic and sudden changes: a drop in the number of science students, particularly girls, a drop in the number and rate of girls in computer science, an increase in the differences between socio-professional categories, and persistent inequalities between regions".

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Published on 04/11/24