The return of school at home for 12.5 million students has put the digital workspaces (ENT) and the Classroom at Home device to the test. A repeat of the difficulties encountered during the first lockdown in spring 2020.

In the meantime, the General Inspectorate of Education, Sport and Research (IGESR), in January, the Court of Auditors and the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), in March, published their findings and recommendations on digital education following the 2020 lock-in period.

On the eve of the school reconfinement, at the beginning of April, Pascal Plantard, anthropologist, professor of digital uses at the University of Rennes-II, drew as main lesson of the switch to distance learning, during the first confinement, a modification of the practices and the relations between teachers, parents and students.

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Pascal Pantard: Thanks to the crisis, parents and teachers have come together in an unprecedented way "

In this "learning nation," parents and teachers have come closer together than ever before as a result of the crisis. In a representative sample of the French population, 95% of the parents we surveyed said that in 2020 they had regular exchanges with teachers; 78% said this was not the case a year earlier. This is a real surprise.

Our 2019 data showed that a quarter of teachers were acculturated to digital technologies, half made simple use of them, and a quarter made no (or very little) use. The 2020 survey found that the median 50 percent had shifted to much greater digital use. Among their motivations, the fear of losing contact with students is cited first. That leaves a quarter of teachers in real trouble. While it is very difficult to know what is going on in their classes, they have been identified as having "conflicts of legitimacy": the rapid, forced evolution of their profession paralyzes them.

We realized that distance learning in France has gone through two phases.

• A first phase of strict reproduction of the school form, from March to the spring vacations of 2020, during which the teachers wanted to reproduce, but from a distance, the organization of the class, the succession of lessons, the contents... And this by imagining that the families could follow, which was not the case.
• Then, a second, more structured phase saw them implement what we call "course scripting. Radically different teaching. This is another advance at work.

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General Inspectorate of Education: distance learning that identically reproduces the methods of the face-to-face teaching model is a dead end

The clear impression that emerged was that while the school system was not, strictly speaking, ready to face such a crisis, it was nonetheless capable of dealing with it with unsuspected resources, particularly human resources, and the commitment of all the actors in education was particularly positive.

From a pedagogical point of view, all the actors quickly engaged in a reflection on these new teaching conditions. It focused on teaching methods, on the comparative merits of "face-to-face" and "distance learning", on their forced, but also possibly desirable, hybridization; on the various types of activities and exercises to be offered to students to foster their culture and progress; on the evaluation of their work and the variety of grading methods.

• Whatever the resources mobilized by the school system, a significant number of students have "dropped out" for various reasons, among which access to digital technology has played a significant role.
• Similarly, if, as a whole, the system had more or less the capacities required to face a crisis situation, the use of these capacities, mainly human - management of resources, dissemination of necessary information, competence to use computer tools - will have revealed shortcomings that should be corrected as soon as possible.

• Organize the coordination of pedagogical teams involved in distance learning, with regard to the platforms, applications and services used, the amount of work given to students, or the organization of timetables. Encourage time for joint reflection on distance learning methods
• Organize dialogue between management teams, teachers and parents. Increase dialogue between principals and teachers in primary education; systematize exchanges between the administrative team and teachers in secondary education; continue the actions set up for parents in order to involve them in the organization of educational continuity, but also in the life of the class, the school and the establishment, as well as in the educational support of their children at home.
• To carry out a systematic and regular assessment of the capacity to conduct or follow distance learning activities.
• Train in real life situations. Carry out annual or biannual training sessions to ensure that all parties involved (academic services, schools, administrative and pedagogical teams) are properly prepared and that equipment is adapted to the unexpected transition to a "crisis" distance learning situation.

• Train teachers in distance education. Within the framework of initial and in-service training, prepare teachers for the pedagogical and didactic specificities of distance education (in crisis but also in non-crisis situations), in particular for the personalized support of students or the use of evaluation tools that allow for rapid and individualized feedback to students.
• Adapt the institutional offer of educational resources. Offer teachers a catalog of pedagogically validated, RGPD-compliant resources that are easily accessible and adapted to a sudden surge in usage. Encourage the production of video capsules and simulation software in experimental and professional disciplines
• Train inspectors in the pedagogical and didactic specificities of distance education and encourage direct observations.
• Develop research on the determinants of the effectiveness of distance education in the school field.

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Cour des Comptes: "Despite rapid mobilization, inequalities in access to public services

At first, students and families, worried about their child's academic career and chances of success, especially in exam classes, massively turned to the CNED offer and the digital work spaces (ENT) of schools, which were the digital tools immediately available.

With "Ma classe à la maison" and the "classe virtuelle", the CNED was able to offer two essential services for distance learning.

The cned.fr website, which was saturated for a brief period18 , recorded one million registrations in the first three days, with peak traffic reaching three million unique visitors.

As of early July 2020, 1.8 million families were enrolled in My Classroom at Home.

Use of this service was significant, but not overwhelming: for the middle school level, for example, 10% of students reported using it often or very often, and 14% occasionally.

The ramp-up of virtual classes has been gradual: from 20,000 in March to 250,000 weekday sessions in April (and 60,000 on weekends).

In elementary school and in collèges de l'éducation prioritaire, 39% of teachers used the virtual classroom, with a higher proportion in other collèges (44%) and in lycée, but with a marked difference between lycée professionnel (47%) and lycée général et technologique (58%)20.

Beyond these imperfections and in the particular context of confinement, the ENTs constituted a "ready-to-use" technical solution to switch to the distance school.

On the other hand, the problem remained in primary education due to the fact that only a minority of schools had an ENT: only 13% of them had one in 2020.

Despite efforts to improve access to institutional portals, some teachers, in order to stay in touch with their students, have favored social networks (WhatsApp, Snapchat, Discord, etc.), despite the security problems they pose.

In addition, the Pronote software, of private origin, which is used by 8,000 secondary schools out of 11,380 schools, has worked without interruption since the beginning of the lockdown, providing an alternative solution for accessing homework assignments and documents made available by teachers for their classes.

The difficulties concerned first of all students in digital break, i.e. completely deprived of access to digital technology, a poorly identified population.

At least 500,000 to 600,000 students would be digitally disrupted out of just over 12 million.

At issue

• intra-family sharing of equipment
• the connection: it was often due to an unstable or poor quality connection that the students had difficulty following the videoconferences; the bandwidth seems to have been insufficient for the simultaneous work of the parents and their children
• in a very large number of cases, the student's only digital equipment is a cell phone, with a very limited package, both for the internet and for the telephone. The number of students from disadvantaged families who do not have access to a computer (36%) and who are enrolled in priority education and vocational high schools. In the most modest families, there is sometimes only one cell phone for a large sibling.
• In addition, receiving homework assignments without the ability to print makes schoolwork very complicated.
• the lack of space for school work in many homes.

The school world was completely unprepared for the novel experience of widespread distance learning, which had as a corollary,:

• the concentration of uses on the most basic functionalities (communication functions rather than more elaborate uses to pursue learning)
• A weak contribution of digital technology for the youngest students, the most fragile or with special educational needs.

The vast majority of teachers use digital tools for basic functions: use of interactive whiteboards in primary education, digital workspaces (ENT) in secondary education, mainly to manage students' textbooks and school life.

Some teachers remain on the sidelines of digital technology and are very uncomfortable with the changes required in their profession.

Students expressed regret that there was not more coordination among teachers as to the procedures to be followed and the digital tools used

While most teens demonstrate great agility in using social networks, teachers found during lockdown that they have not mastered basic functionality, such as sending an email (let alone one with an attachment, which compromises sending homework), and are unfamiliar with commonly used formats like PDF.

For the majority of teachers, the primary objective was to maintain the connection with their students.

The consolidation of learning appears to be a secondary objective and few staff have had the ambition to achieve the program

The main activity of many teachers, as well as of the main education counselors (CPE), during the first weeks of confinement, was the telephone, to contact the students, or their families when it was necessary. They did so from their homes, with their personal phones. Electronic messages also played an important role.

• For the private software Pronote, the major uses concerned the textbook and the delivery of copies, as well as e-mails.
• For the ENT, the "E-mail" and "Textbook" services were the most consulted (these two services alone account for 60% of the total consultation time on the ENT), with collaborative work tools ranking only third among the services most used by students.

• During the first period, when it was hoped that it would not last more than a month, the objective was for the students to revise in order to avoid the loss of recent knowledge.
• The extension of the lockdown after spring break brought to light the need to continue to conduct programs remotely, in a virtual classroom, an ambition that is much more difficult to achieve.

Three particular student populations encountered difficulties:

• schoolchildren, depending for many on the capacity of their parents to ensure a pedagogical relay, the first degree being generally badly equipped with digital means;
• Students with special educational needs, including disabilities;
• the most vulnerable students, in priority education or in vocational education.

• to set up the basic digital base in schools, colleges and high schools, by generalizing the negotiation in academies with the elected representatives and their associations
• establish an operational pedagogical continuity plan in each school and establishment, under the authority of the head teacher or school director, based on shared choices regarding procedures and tools
• include a training component in the operational pedagogical continuity plan of each school and institution
• create without delay a data site on digital education, managed by the DNE and the DEPP, making available all available statistics on equipment, connections and uses
• give students, for periods of crisis and for categories of students to be determined, free access to data beyond their package, by negotiating with cell phone operators

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