President of the French Republic François Hollande visits the Campus Paris Kremlin-Bicêtre
Monday 3rd of October 2016, President of the French Republic François Hollande came on our campus along with Minister of National Education, Higher Education and Research Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, Minister of Labor, Employment, Vocational Training and Social Dialogue Miriam El Khomri, Minister of the City, Youth and Sports Patrick Kanner, Secretary of State for Digital and Innovation Axelle Lemaire, and Secretary of State for Vocational Training and Apprenticeship Clotilde Valter. The President officially inaugurated the Grande Ecole du Numérique (Great Digital School). He was welcomed by IONIS Education Group‘s CEO Marc Sellam, Executive Vice-President Fabrice Bardèche and General Manager Marc Drillech.
The Grand Ecole du Numérique brings together training programs in the digital field that cater primarily to young people without qualifications or diploma and those looking for employment or retraining. Its network is already gathering 171 labeled programs, including IONIS Group’s own Web@cadémie located on the Campus Paris Kremlin-Bicêtre alongside EPITA, Epitech, Ionis-STM and the Coding Academy. The President came and met with the staff and students of the concerned schools and reiterated in a speech his wish to further develop this free program promoting social and professional integration to meet the employment needs of the digital industry.
“The Web@cadémie was a pioneer and our inspiration for creating the Grande Ecole du Numérique.
This idea was not to create a large school like any other: you had to have a multiplicity of areas and organizations, to attract young school drop-outs with a chaotic journey who are searching for their own path.
The digital world can be a great opportunity for them. This Grande Ecole du Numérique is therefore a school aiming to give them a second chance. These young people come, cling to a year of training and then to a second year of sandwich-course. This diploma allows them to either pursue their education or start another career.
We made sure that these young people are best accompanied to become developers, web managers, and many other kind of trades that are evolving and becoming more and more sophisticated.
Today we have many start-ups that are created, innovative companies raising funding and large companies performing extremely well. Among the students currently training here, some will in turn create new promising start-ups and contribute to the growth of the French Tech.
Despite the 10,000 engineers trained in France each year, we must keep on training many more youngsters to the digital trades in order to achieve the level of growth required to fill these new jobs.”
Francois Hollande, President of the French Republic
The visit was then concluded with the signing of an agreement between different public and private partners. This agreement is part of the Grande Ecole du Numérique‘s plan to train 10,000 students in 200 schools by 2017.