A screenshot of the ENT Pronote this Tuesday April 6, 2021. – D. Bancaud / 20minutes
- Homeschooling kicked off on Tuesday with numerous “bugs” reported on social media by teachers, parents and students, due to inaccessible or failing digital servers.
- An episode that recalls what happened last year: homeschooling started badly, with saturated networks and inaccessible workspaces. Difficulties resolved after a few days.
- In a statement, the Ministry of Education promised that “the fluidity” of these platforms will “gradually recover in the coming hours.”
A year later, they have the impression of reliving the same nightmare. This Tuesday is the first day of the return of distance education for all schoolchildren, college and high school students in France, schools being closed. Students must take four days of distance learning this week before the start of spring break.
And like last year during the first confinement, technical problems are emerging. Error messages, completely inaccessible sites… This morning, numerous testimonies on Twitter reported an inability to connect to the ENT (digital work spaces), which allow students to access homework submitted by their teachers. Ditto for the Cned platform “my class at home”, which provides access to video lessons and interactive content. We ourselves were able to observe the inaccessibility of the Pronote site, totally saturated this morning while it was still accessible on Monday evening. This Tuesday morning, this message was displayed: “In exceptional circumstances, exceptional measures… To allow everyone to access their educational network in good conditions, we have limited the time of the sessions and established a quota logic. When the maximum number of users is reached, you must wait to access them in your turn. Sorry for this constraint, come back and try again in a few minutes ”. But a few minutes later, nothing was still happening. We also tried to access the Cned site “My class at home”. This notification appeared to us: “your connection failed”.
“Connection difficulties are rising everywhere!” “
On the teachers’ side, the anger was in order this Tuesday morning. Like Frantz Laurent, a high school history-geography teacher, who tweeted: “The ENT is already saturated, exactly like last year during the very 1st confinement. So I can’t communicate with my students. What has the ministry done for a year, other than communication? “. same for me Isabelle Ratao, SVT teacher who fears losing contact with his students: “I’m tired and annoyed for having broken my head sending exercises to my students who will just be discouraged at not being able to connect and who are going to take vacations anticipated ”.
A situation that also arouses the ire of teachers’ unions: “With 12 million students and 1.2 million staff, one could imagine that the 6th largest economy in the world could deploy digital solutions to match. It is clear that the National Education is clearly behind in this area, ”said Sud Education in a press release. “One year was surely too short to prepare for the #distancial and the #Educational continuity. Connection difficulties are rising everywhere! “, Also protests the SNUipp-FSU on Twitter. “Episode 1, season 2 of the#SchoolAdistance Unable to access ENT. How do we say ? Ah yes, “we are prepared for anything”. Nervous laughter ”, also tweets Sophie Vénétitay, teacher of SES and deputy secretary general of SNES-FSU.
An attack on the Cned?
Asked during a trip on Tuesday, the Minister of Education evokes a “very strong computer attack” against “My Class at home” of the Cned, “apparently coming from abroad”. Regarding ENTs, Jean-Michel Blanquer remained vague, but was optimistic: “The local authorities concerned will be able to reestablish connections with private operators very quickly”, he indicated.
In a statement, the Ministry of National Education said that connection problems did not occur everywhere and that “500,000 students and teachers” had accessed the platforms on Tuesday and that “150,000 virtual classes” had taken place. While promising that the “fluidity” of these platforms would “gradually recover in the coming hours”.