France lags behind many countries when it comes to using technology in classrooms, due in part to lack of coordination and a clear policy. But educators concerned about the impact of screen usage in schools say the country has the chance to reflect on best practice before rushing to adopt new tech.
“Their tablets have to stay in their bags,” says Christophe, who teaches management and economics at a private Catholic high school west of Paris, where every student receives a tablet.
The tablets are funded by the Ile-de-France region, which oversees high schools, public and private, and which in 2020 introduced digital textbooks.
Today about half of general high schools in the region use them.
At first, Christophe said, he was open to the idea: “Traditional books are not perfect. Sometimes they are heavy and sometimes students forget them, so at first I thought it could be a good solution.
“But I was very disappointed with the screens.”
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First, there were technical problems – WiFi connectivity issues, students who couldn’t find their login codes, tablets that weren’t charged.
Then, once the students actually got onto the devices, they were distracted.
“We are here to develop their concentration, to develop their attention and these skills are very important. And when you give a screen to a teenager you can be sure that he doesn't hear you and doesn't listen to you – he's focused on the screen,” says Christophe.
Screen break
Students themselves admit to wanting a break from screens, especially when they already take up much of their leisure time.
Charles, a first-year student who is in an elective management course with Christophe, says he spends hours on his computer at home playing video games, to the point of forgetting to do homework. He tries to avoid his tablet at school.
“It's my screen-free time. I just don't want to have a screen around me for school, so I can be more focused,” he says.
His classmate Carlette says he realised several years ago that his phone was taking up too much of his time, and tried to limit himself.
“I kind of put myself on a screen-time control,” he said. “And I noticed it's better, in the way I socialise.”
He finds he manages to use his time better with less time on his phone.
Using tech mindfully
In the class, teacher Christophe leads a vocabulary exercise, where students fill in words from a scene they have watched from a television show – projected onto a shared screen at the front of the room – on a piece of paper.
“When they work in class, they do it on paper. They have to focus on the document,” he explains. “It's easy for me to check they are doing the exercise, and to help students who have trouble.”
Christophe co-founded a collective a year ago calling for a joined-up approach to using technology in schools, amid mixed messages coming to students, parents and teachers.
Then and still today, lawmakers were grappling with the issue of screens – both in and out of education.
To ban or to back?
At the end of 2023, then Education Minister Gabriel Attal started talking about the serious health risks of screens and social media to young people.
More than once, he called young people using screens at home a potential “health catastrophe”.
Such caution resulted in a trial ban on personal smartphones in several schools at the start of the latest term.
Yet schools have equally been encouraged to embrace technology, even as uptake has proved variable.
While broad frameworks are set by the Ministry of Education, decisions about material, including screens and textbooks, are made locally – by French regions for middle and high schools, and by cities for primary schools.
This means there are vast differences across the country. Statistics show that there were 24 tablets and other mobile devices per student in high school classrooms in 2022, which suggests many regions do not have any.
In primary school, there is an average of four desktop computers per hundred students, and no mobile devices.
Defining a balance
In April, President Emmanuel Macron received an expert report he had commissioned on the use of screens by young people, which recommended limits on screens, smartphones and social media.
It highlighted the fact that decentralised policy-making undermines a unified approach to screens in schools. And it warned that consistency in and out of school is key.
"The strategies used in schools must be coherent with the messages sent from elsewhere to parents," the report said.
Christophe, the high school teacher, agrees. “Parents say, ‘don't use your screen’, and at school, ‘use your screen’,” he says. “It’s not logical, it’s hard to understand. We need a clear message.”
For him and his collective, the key is to strike the right balance between helping students focus on schoolwork and learning how to use computers responsibly.
Students “need digital skills and we think it's necessary to have a class with computers so they can learn how to use Word, to use how to organise their files, how to use the internet”, he says.
“We want classes with digital tools, to learn digital abilities. But we don't want the use of digital tools as a way to study other subjects.”
More on this story on the Spotlight on France podcast, episode 117. Listen here.
