First, we would like to remind the reader who is not aware of the specifics of French undergraduate system that there is in France, beside University, another way to follow a scientific curriculum. Those French preparatory classes (CPGE) attract most of the best baccalaureate graduates and consist of intensive courses in mathematics and physics, and in preparing both for the national competitive entry examinations for French Schools of Engineering and for graduate studies in Science. Most French researchers – but not all – have followed that path. In general, the students who follow this path become engineers, but many become teachers or researchers as well. The curriculum involves lectures in French as well as in foreign languages.

For 30 years, since the introduction of a programming course using Pascal in French preparatory classes (CPGE), the « Algorithmique et programmation » conference has been a major element for the training of CPGE teachers in Computer Science. At the beginning, only a few of the students in CPGE studied computer science. Over the course of various reforms, the importance of Computer Science has grown in scientific content.

Today, Computer Science is taught to all CPGE student. A major reform in 2021 created an IT-dominated curriculum (MPII/MPI curriculum with C and OCaml as the two programming languages taught). All the other curricula now have a common computer science course (including theoretical aspects, mostly in algorithmics, and using Python as programming language). The MP curriculum, which is the most advanced in mathematics, also includes a computer science option (with more theoretical courses and with Ocaml as programming language). This, coupled with the creation of a CAPES and an Agrégation in computer science, the landscape of computer science education has been turned upside down.

We mention that Computer Science has been introduced in high school with a devoted course (NSI). Tools from algorithmics are now also taught in Mathematics and Physics classes. This introduction has been made possible thanks to huge efforts from high school teachers who have had first to teach themselves on their own time. The workshop “Algorithmics and programming” – which was suddenly interrupted by Covid – was the most important training tool for CPGE teachers. As of today, to the best of our knowledge, there is no equivalent to this workshop on pedagogy for Computer Science.

For this first session since the ambitious reform of 2021, we will investigate the notion directly involved in the programm of CPGE Computer Science.