France is struggling to encourage women to take an interest in the strained digital sector. Questioned on the subject, the co-founder of LightOn, Igor Carron, referred the State to its own responsibility.
The educational reform and its consequences on the study of mathematics would, according to him, have worsened an already unflattering record. “To be very clear, we will have fewer women in the future because of this (…) Education is not doing its job so that there are more women in Prep. »
4.7% of students in Digital and computer sciences
Regarding the teaching of computer science in high school, the findings are also more than mixed according to ‘La Société Informatique de France. The association – created in May 2012 and recognized as being of public utility since 2018 – looked at students’ interest in the Digital and Computer Sciences (NSI) specialty introduced in 2019.
For the SIF, this discipline “must grow rapidly because it is intended to participate in the diversification of student profiles alongside other more traditional specialties and because it is directly linked to the professions most in tension which be.”
Since its creation, NSI has certainly progressed, but remains “at too low a level”. This is not its only weakness. In fact, the specialty interests “very little girls”. Finally, she is one of the most abandoned between the first and the final year.
Some encouraging signals should nevertheless be noted for the 2022-2023 school period. The share of students choosing NSI increased from 4.3% to 4.7% between 2021 and 2022. An increase therefore, but weak.
A specialty massively abandoned in final year
“NSI finds itself on a dividing line: far below the 7 main specialties, between 10% and 40% on the one hand, and well above the rarer specialties, all below 3% on the other hand” , analyzes the association.
For this, NSI should aim to reach the average rate for a specialty, i.e. 15.4%. With a rate of 4.7%, the road looks long. At the current rate of growth, 15% will not be achievable before 2045.
The current system does not benefit this specialty either. Final year students only take 2 of these subjects, compared to 3 in first year. In 2022, NSI lost a little more than half of these students, “and the divide between girls and boys remains”.
The number of girls following this specialty is increasing (from 1814 to 2612 between 2020 and 2022). The rate of girls is thus 14.6% in 2022. In absolute value, however, the results are particularly low. These “figures only represent around 1.5 girls per high school (all high schools combined) on average.”
“They do not seem to be able to increase significantly as long as no proactive and incentive policy is put in place in this area,” regrets La Société Informatique de France. At the current rate, the 30% mark set by the ministry would not be reached before 2043.