Quebec is granting an envelope of more than $54 million over three years to Alloprof for the development of a new platform dedicated to learning French in order to improve its mastery among primary and secondary students.
The Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, made the announcement Monday in the library of an elementary school in Longueuil, on the South Shore of Montreal.
“It’s a very important investment. But if we want to improve the performance of our students in French, we must make investments like these,” said the CAQ representative at a press conference.
The platform, already accessible on the web, bears the name Allofrancais and is intended to complement the work carried out in class by teachers. The content will be continuously improved until 2027.
Students will find information sheets, videos and educational games there. Alloprof, known for its digital resources in different subjects, promises to offer personalized courses adapted to the difficulties of students in French from the 2025-2026 school year thanks to a “virtual assistant”. The activities will also evolve in real time according to the progress of the young people.
“We put technology at the service of teaching,” said Mr. Drainville.
Artificial intelligence will be put to good use, but this use will be “within an extremely well-controlled framework”, assured the minister.
“The new educational tools that we will create thanks to Allofrançais will be Quebec content. We will ensure that Quebec culture is at the heart of this new content,” he also added, stressing that he had promised to put local culture at the service of language learning as part of the modernization of French courses.
Students who need it at the end of their course on Allofrançais will always be able to turn to new tutoring services provided by teachers and be entitled to follow-up appointments.
Alloprof indicates that it supports 550,000 different students and carries out an average of 60 million interventions each year. With this new platform, the organization plans to provide 22 million additional supports for French alone within three years, said its co-founder and general director, Sandrine Faust.
“There will be 50 new positions. We will use new technologies. There will be calls for tenders that will be launched to help us deploy certain more advanced technologies,” explained Ms. Faust, alongside the minister.
“Give a push”
Mr. Drainville raised from the outset at a press conference that the promotion and mastery of French among young people represents an issue, pointing in particular to performance in ministerial exams.
The results of the last exams last June, revealed in August, showed that the success rate for the writing test in secondary 5 had fallen to 70.7%, compared to 74.8% last year. last.
Mr. Drainville mentioned that “the historical trend of results in French is not favorable”. “We feel the need to take a step forward. Today’s announcement contributes to this desire,” he said.
Without knowing whether the new platform will be sufficient to reverse this trend, the minister nevertheless said he was convinced that it “will make a difference” among students who have difficulties, maintaining that Alloprof has proven itself over time. years.