The French Ministry of Education published its Digital Strategy for 2023-2027. This strategy supports the use of “digital commons” including free software quoting their sovereign, secured, free and community characteristics. The strategy aims at providing students with digital skills and is the conclusion of a 2020 consultation.
The part of the strategy addressing the choice of digital tools for children and teachers points at the fact that both should be able to use “digital commons” to be able to co-construct and share creations. To achieve this, the strategy plan to support the development of digital commons through a concerted roadmap for the further development of new solutions. As of now, the strategy recommends using the software programs developed for the French education ministry, based on BigBlueButton and Moodle. These can be found on the apps.education.fr platform, which list other recommended solutions. The terms “communs numériques” repeatedly used here echoes the report on digital commons published during the French presidency of the Council in 2022.
The strategy also mentions that students and teachers working on digital and technological science will be given access to a national forge to learn and practice collaboration and the sharing of source code.
The general strategy has four main objectives:
- To strengthen national and local cooperation between education stakeholders
- Developing students' digital skills
- Provide teachers with a clear offer of digital tools and resources
- Develop the robustness, security, accessibility, quality and environmental responsibility of IT tools
Overall, the digital strategy for education is hinting at an increase in the use of free and open source software for all parts related to the French education system, with a particular focus on providing students with appropriate training. This effort is also to be contrasted with the massive use of proprietary software, against which the current Minister of Education Pap NDiaye has taken recent decisions.
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