Justice orders the Île-de-France Region to withdraw its digital school textbooks by November 2

The Île-de-France Region will have to withdraw the school textbooks that it publishes on a digital platform on November 2 and must inform high schools of this decision so that teachers can prepare for it, the administrative justice on appeal ruled on Friday.

“The Île-de-France Region, which is responsible for informing the high schools concerned (...), will have to remove the +territorial+/+free+ school textbooks from the aforementioned digital platform (Pearltrees, editor's note) on Monday, November 2,” decided the Paris administrative court of appeal in a ruling consulted by AFP. It thus granted additional time to the regional council to comply with a judgment rendered on May 26, declaring the publication of these school textbooks by the local community illegal.

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A staggered withdrawal to better prepare

Since 2022, the region led by Valérie Pécresse (LR) has published and offered free digital school textbooks to Ile-de-France high schools, presented as “free” and modifiable by teachers, accessible on an online platform, Pearltrees. The initiative aroused opposition from private publishers who, via their association Les Éditeurs d'enseignement, denounced unfair competition and launched a procedure. They won before the Montreuil administrative court, which ordered the regional council to withdraw these manuals by September 30.

The Region appealed the decision - a procedure on the merits still in progress - and simultaneously filed a request for suspension, affirming that the cessation of free textbooks was "likely to lead to consequences which are difficult to repair for high school students and teachers". According to the court, the withdrawal on November 2 rather than September 30 must “allow teachers to prepare.” The withdrawal of free textbooks “will not disrupt the return to school for All Saints’ Day,” the lawyer for the association of education publishers, Me Emmanuel Glaser, told AFP.

According to him, the Region can use its budget “to order licenses for publishers' manuals and paper manuals if necessary”. “In view of the consequences of this decision for half of the Ile-de-France high schools, (the) immediate priority is to preserve the work undertaken by students and teachers, so that they are not penalized,” underlines the Region in a press release. “Basically I will continue the fight, because there is indeed a public interest in making a tool that is four times better and ten times more used for four times less” than the digital textbooks offered by private publishers, Valérie Pécresse declared to the press on Friday.

“This is a political setback for Valérie Pécresse who was personally committed to banning publishers’ textbooks – paper and digital – from Ile-de-France high schools,” said the Communist Left group, environmentalist and citizen at the regional council, in a press release. In order not to “disorganize the high schools” concerned, the opposition group is calling for the strengthening of regional credits devoted to the acquisition of school textbooks from publishers, from the permanent commission scheduled for next week.