Pix IA — France's Mandatory AI-Literacy Pathways for 1.5 Million Students

Pix is the French government's national digital-competency framework and certification platform, used by essentially every secondary-school student since 2017. In March 2026, Pix, the France 2030 investment programme and the Caisse des Dépôts' Banque des Territoires opened two compulsory AI-literacy learning pathways.

The pathways target students in Year 9 (4e), Year 10 (seconde) and first-year CAP vocational tracks — more than 1.5 million learners a year — teaching how generative AI systems work alongside their ethical, social and environmental stakes, including algorithmic bias, misinformation, deepfakes and AI's ecological footprint.

Each 30-45 minute module opens with a diagnostic of the student's existing knowledge. Before national rollout, the pathways were piloted between September and December 2025 in 140 schools, gathering feedback from more than 7,000 students and 100 teachers to refine the content; a dedicated teacher-training pathway is scheduled to open in June 2026.

The evidence to date covers reach, mandatory adoption and a structured pilot-and-feedback cycle rather than measured learning gains: no test scores, pre/post AI-literacy assessment or independent evaluation of the pathways' educational effectiveness has yet been published.

Because the modules are compulsory and delivered through an existing national certification body rather than an opt-in pilot, France provides an unusually large-scale test case for whether centrally designed AI-literacy curricula can be embedded system-wide — but outcome evidence will only arrive with the first cohorts to complete it.