Basic education, an imperative for social justice, grounds the competitiveness of developed countries. It represents a colossal investment: France’s education expenditure represents over 110 billion Euros, or 7,1% of the GDP, a percentage similar to that of other OECD countries. In addition this expenditure,  2 more billion Euros are spent by households on tutoring and 21 billion Euros on continuing education.

French education in the middle of three major evolutions:
• The popularization of education (from 3% baccalaureates in 1945 to 60% in 2005), and requiring new teaching methods and tools
• New resources and practices provided by digital technology
• New international players that develop and commercialize these resources

Educational systems are being reformed: England’s Curriculum Online project spent 160 million Euros a year for schools to have digital resources and 2 billion Euros a year for technology. These measures have improved the efficiency of the education system and given a strategic advantage to its industry, well positioned for export due to the language. France has many actors of international quality: digital educational editors, major research labs, and strong pedagogical and didactic traditions. For historical reasons, these actors are highly concentrated in the Ile-de-France region (95% of the editors, most of the major research labs and high-tech companies). For over 20 years these actors have been working on the resources that will found the educational practices of tomorrow: more active, personalized, and dynamic teaching; more reliable and pertinent evaluation methods to follow the students’ progress; a new relationship between school and home; a direct connection to the most current medias; access to massive databanks, etc. Yet these forces remain divided: there are more than 60 significant editors, but a coordinated industrial strategy remains to be seen.

Community contact:

Jonathan Bartoli – jonathan.bartoli@capdigital.com – 00 33 (0)1 40 41 74 97