Teaching the sea and maritime affairs in France

Summary

This report stems from the observation that there is no tool for judging the effectiveness of the schemes aimed at bringing the sea into the national culture.

For the general attention of the “Section for Studies, Foresight and Cooperation”; for the particular attention of Mr Rémy Schwartz, Mr Fabien Raynaud and Ms Laurène François. This report was prompted by the Conseil d’État’s wish, following the hearing of DeepBlue Foundation in January 2026, to receive a study making it possible to assess the schemes aimed at bringing the sea into the national culture. We would like to express our thanks for this opportunity and ask you, Madam, Sir, to kindly receive our work.

Author: Hugo Sannier, Head of the Research section at DeepBlue Foundation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This report would not have been possible without the generosity, availability and flexibility of its contributors. We would particularly like to thank Pascal-Raphaël AMBROGI, State administrator, First-class Inspector General of Education, Sport and Research, Senior official responsible for the French language and terminology, Member of the Conseil Supérieur des Programmes, Captain (operational reserve) and Coordinator of the Navy-Youth Training network (Navy Personnel Directorate); Bertrand GORI, Commander, in charge of partnerships with the national education system at the French Navy’s School and Training Office; Tristan LECOQ, Inspector General of National Education, former associate university professor (contemporary history), Université Paris Sorbonne, Captain and Member of the Naval section of the Académie de Marine; François LAMBERT, Director General of the École Nationale Supérieure Maritime (ENSM) and former Chief of Staff at the Ministry of the Sea

SUMMARY

This report stems from the observation that there is no tool for judging the effectiveness of the schemes aimed at bringing the sea into the national culture. There is indeed a tradition of reports on the state of sea education; it sets out to inventory the schemes developed in response to the repeated observation that the sea and its stakes are absent from national education. However, by adding to the map of classic teaching two others – that of maritime training in France and that of education through awareness-raising – we wish to shift away from this tradition in two ways. Since the logic that equates the inclusion of the sea in curricula with an effective maritime culture among French pupils is flawed, it seems necessary to us to understand teaching as a whole as going beyond the limits of the national education system, especially when the object we seek to observe is as supple and labile as the sea and its stakes. We argue that the pedagogy of specialised training and awareness-raising contribute just as much to bringing the sea into the national culture.

INTRODUCTION

Taking on the exercise of a report on teaching the sea means placing oneself in a line of continuity. The tradition of these reports was born in 1996 with the Legohérel report, produced by the Inspector General of that name. Continued by many Inspectors General after him, this tradition has a notable milestone: the speech given at the Académie de Marine on 18 October 2021 by another Inspector General of National Education, Tristan Lecoq¹ . It seems important to look first at the approaches of the earlier reports; we will then be better able to appreciate the originality we wish to develop. The Legohérel report was produced after a three-year observation period (1993-1996); its most widely supported idea can be summed up as follows: the sea, coastlines and French maritime heritage feature in localised educational initiatives, and there is no scheme or curriculum item that mentions them explicitly. In other words, there is “no integration of the ‘maritime dimension’ into teaching, no general culture of the sea, no worldview in which the sea would have its place ”. Legohérel’s dissection of national education rests on one category: the balance between land and sea. Discipline by discipline, the Inspector General makes a number of proposals which, through case studies, would help to highlight the “maritime entry points” in the curricula. In this report, the sea is a surface on which geography and history should be presented to pupils; this reflects an overwhelmingly spatial understanding of the sea. The idea of the sea as a world which, in the collective imagination, would attest to a positive “marine culture” does not yet exist. The first report on teaching the sea was therefore the occasion for noting its absence and for the first proposals to remedy it, but it also reflected the way the sea was conceived 30 years ago.

“ Where do we stand 25 years later?”: this is the central question of T. Lecoq’s speech. This retrospective speech takes the Legohérel report as a milestone in order to take stock of what had since been put in place. Whereas the Legohérel report was essentially justified by a tension – France is the world’s second maritime power, yet the sea is not taught – the positive tone of the “Lecoq speech” stems from a correlation between the “ maritime trajectory of the world” and the effective presence of the sea in teaching. In other words, since the sea is a matter of current affairs, it is taught. And indeed, “ the sea is now a dimension of our teaching: we have put salt into the curricula”. Again, “a history and geography of the sea at school has firmly taken shape around paradigms that are the great moments and great stakes of our maritime history, sustainable development, globalisation in all its aspects, territories, their actors, their stakes and their conflicts ”. Thus, “Teaching the sea means conceiving and teaching an overall dimension, one that makes it possible to trace a line of sea, like a lifeline, in, through and for all the subjects of the Republic’s school”. To characterise it, let us say that the continuity between the Legohérel report and the “Lecoq speech” is performative, that is, effective in terms of reforms. “From lower secondary school to the final year of upper secondary school and preparatory classes, the maritime dimension has never been as present in the curricula as following their rebuilding between 2008 and 2019 and their implementation since. To mark this unprecedented development, to move from the implicit to the explicit, the first topic taught in final-year geography, from the start of the 2020 school year, is entitled ‘Seas and oceans. At the heart of globalisation’. The so-called ‘specialist’ courses in the penultimate and final years at the same time emphasise the historical, geographical, geopolitical and environmental dimensions of the study of maritime spaces”. The maritime dimension of our teaching lies at the junction of the three characteristic elements of our education system: curricula, examinations and teacher training. Note the questions from which the various earlier works look for absence: “What is the place of the sea and maritime issues in teaching in France? How is the sea presented to young French people? What do they know about it and about our country’s major maritime problems when they leave the education system ?”.

Given the achievements of the previous reports, the “maritimisation of French education” goes without saying; but is it really possible to produce a second-order discourse about education that would judge the effectiveness of the schemes and stages of this “maritimisation”? To consider that it is indeed possible amounts to accepting the following logic: infusing the sea into the curricula amounts to reaching all French pupils. In other words, “we have put salt into the curricula” is understood as “we have put salt into the minds of French pupils”. Although no measuring instrument or scheme can yet set a limit to this logic, let us note that its mechanism tends to take the means (we have made the curricula maritime) for the end (we have made minds maritime). It seems, however, that there is an irreducible distance between the curricula and teaching as a whole; does the reality of national education not rest, as T. Lecoq said, on the trio of curricula, pedagogy and training? But conversely, is it even possible to believe oneself capable of shifting attention from the curricula to the effective presence of the sea in pupils’ lived world? The scope of a report certainly does not allow it. On the other hand, we believe that another, more thematic logic could be the occasion for a parallel approach.

Let us take things from further back. As we have said, producing a report on the state of sea education means placing oneself in the continuity of a type of report which is, moreover, performative, in the sense that the earlier proposals have now been applied. However, while the “Lecoq speech” was original in bringing the Legohérel report to fruition, we want to believe in the relevance of a more cross-cutting understanding of teaching. The originality of our report’s approach lies at the crossroads of two paradigms. First, the cartographic one, because it is essential to meet the need for a stocktaking by investigating curricula, schemes, pedagogies and complementary resources; second, the desire to understand teaching more broadly than education, because we want to assess the maritimisation of culture more directly than the two other reports. Against the lack of a tool for judging the effectiveness of the “maritimisation of minds”, we propose a semantic rapprochement linking education and awareness-raising, so as no longer to look only at what is maritime in education, but also to try to approach the way maritime issues live for pupils.

It is customary to distinguish “sea” and “maritime”. The adjective “maritime” would designate specific training for seafaring professions and would also cover questions of sovereignty, strategy and defence. The noun “sea”, for its part, would be a hypernym embracing all the remaining diversity of what is “marine”, or what relates to maritimity. Because it contains a wider diversity, the noun “sea” seems better suited to bringing out the stakes. We will use this distinction to structure the body of our report. A first, so-called “classic” mapping (curricula, pedagogy, resources and schemes) will thus occupy a first major part (A). A second, focusing more directly on vocational training, will seek to show that even when employment becomes the purpose of sea education, cultivating a maritime mindset is not necessarily set aside (B). Finally, we will confront the particularity of our report’s approach in order to assess its consequences, that is, to establish awareness-raising as a pedagogical approach (C).

Before entering into the mapping itself, the relationships between the various actors in the maritimisation of national education should be shown.

A particular actor: the French Navy. Its link with the national education system stems from a Protocol signed in 2017 on two points: developing the maritime and defence dimension (maritime issues classes / defence classes, attached to a military unit, and therefore also to the Navy) and professional integration. The BCN (National Cohesion Office) runs several programmes directly integrated into schooling, among the most notable of which are the “youth schemes”.

MAPPING

A / TEACHING THE SEA

As we said above, taking stock of the teaching of the sea and its stakes means first and foremost following a compilation logic. Mapping is called for, and so is its structure: we will therefore look at the teaching of the sea and its stakes in the national education system through the trio of curricula, pedagogy and training. Note that the maritimisation of national education can be seen more directly in curricula and resources than in teacher training. Since initial training is essentially the responsibility of the INSPE (national institutes for teacher training), it falls rather within higher education than within the remit of the Ministry of National Education; in-service training of teachers once recruited, on the other hand, does fall within national education.

1 / THE MARITIMISATION OF CURRICULA

Mapping the teaching of the sea means first and foremost reporting on the maritimisation of curricula, as it has taken place and continues to take place since the early 2010s. “Maritimity” has indeed infused the curricula thanks to several impulses that it seems logical to detail before getting concretely into the substance of school curricula. We will break it down into three levels: first lower secondary school (collège), then upper secondary school (lycée), and finally higher education. The progressive maritimisation of curricula has been under way since the early 2010s. In other words, these things are now fairly firmly anchored.

Note

We have chosen not to look at primary school curricula; we will justify this decision more precisely in our last part. At this level, education about the sea and its stakes falls much more than in secondary school within awareness-raising schemes.

i / Mapping of lower secondary (collège) curricula

ii / Mapping of upper secondary (lycée) curricula

iii / “Maritime Issues Classes” (CEM)

Launched in 2022, the Maritime Issues Classes (CEM) scheme has been very successful, with nearly 300 classes active today. It allows teachers to build a year-long multidisciplinary educational project, supported by talks from experts and seafarers, linking school curricula to the sea. CEMs should not be confused with Defence Classes, which are directly sponsored by a French Navy unit and attached to a ship. Of the more than 1,000 such classes in France (mainland, overseas, abroad), about 190 are directly under the Navy’s supervision. Their main feature is to encourage regular exchanges between pupils and the crew. The table below shows the change in the number of schools with at least one CEM. Let us say at once that this table does not claim to list all CEMs in France, but simply to bring out a quantified trend in the spread of this scheme in schools; this trend would in fact match that of a table specific to the number of classes.

iv / In higher education

This overview shows that maritime issues have effectively been integrated into French higher education. However, this dynamic of maritimising curricula should not mask a persistent fragility of French higher education in the field of maritime studies, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. While several institutions, chairs and schemes now help spread maritime issues among students, this offering remains largely specialised and often carried by actors outside the general public university. Indeed, most of the structures identified are either specialised schools or institutions linked to defence, engineering or targeted partnerships. The CESM, the École navale, the ENSM, the IUEM and some major engineering schools play a leading role in spreading contemporary maritime issues; however, these schemes remain concentrated on strategic, technical, operational or environmental questions, and much more rarely on the humanities, law, geopolitics, maritime economics or ocean governance. This finding is all the more worrying because contemporary maritime issues precisely require a build-up of legal, diplomatic and strategic skills. France has the world’s second-largest Exclusive Economic Zone, sits at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and must defend its sovereign interests, its shipowners, its port infrastructure and its capacity for influence amid growing geopolitical competition over the seas and oceans. This situation calls for training lawyers specialising in maritime law and the law of the sea, but also experts able to link economic, diplomatic, environmental and strategic issues.

On the contrary, several recent signals point to a relative weakening of these disciplines in public higher education. In the Parisian academic legal world, the retirement of Professor Philippe Delebecque has left a significant gap in the field of maritime law. More broadly, the academic structuring of maritime studies in the humanities remains limited and scattered. This fragility was illustrated particularly strongly by the closure of the Centre de Droit Maritime et Océanique (CDMO) of Nantes Université, decided in February 2026. Created in 1972, the CDMO was nevertheless one of the main French laboratories specialising in maritime law. Its disappearance, despite the mobilisation of the academic and maritime world and a petition gathering more than 1,500 signatures, caused deep concern among researchers and professionals in the sector. Beyond the Nantes case, this closure symbolises the difficulties faced by academic structures specialising in maritime questions when they lack sufficient critical mass or lasting institutional recognition.

Thus, even as the maritimisation of school curricula has been progressing for more than a decade, the French public university still struggles to structure a genuine interdisciplinary field of maritime studies in the humanities and social sciences. Yet the growing importance of issues linked to sea routes, sovereignty, marine resources, jurisdictional conflicts, submarine cables, the energy transition and the international governance of the oceans makes strengthening this teaching indispensable. Bringing the sea into the national culture cannot rest solely on the scientific, environmental or operational dimensions of maritime issues; it also requires training a new generation of lawyers, diplomats, economists, historians, geographers and international relations specialists able to think of the sea as a political and strategic object in its own right.

2 / TEACHER TRAINING

Because the sea is present in the curricula, it is also a pedagogy through which teachers teach. As a sine qua non, curricula and pedagogy are two sides of the same coin. This part attempts to inventory the schemes and resources that attest to the development of a “pedagogy of the sea”.

First, a few words about initial training. We said above that this training is essentially the responsibility of the INSPE (national institutes for teacher training), and therefore falls more within higher education than within the Ministry of National Education. However, without necessarily wishing to draw conclusions, let us say nonetheless that the maritimisation of curricula directly affects those of the recruitment examinations. See, for example, the curriculum of the 2026 history agrégation, in which the ocean is mentioned seven times² . In-service training of teachers, once recruited, does fall within national education. To deepen their knowledge, the state, ministries and associations offer in-service training through a number of schemes, resources and teaching tools.

3 / SCHEMES AND RESOURCES

After mapping the curricula and teachers’ in-service training, we now propose another mapping. Twofold, this anthology aims to review all the schemes set up by all the actors in the maritimisation of national education, and the various resources made available to the whole teaching profession, ensuring continuity in teachers’ in-service training.`

`

REVIEW AND SPECIFIC TABLES

To be more precise, let us say a few words about some of these schemes, for which we have more detailed data.

An initiative of the Inspectorate General, the French Navy and the Directorate of Maritime Affairs to design and build an introductory sea certificate (BIMer) and a sea-teaching certificate (CAEIMer) so that pupils across the national territory can discover the diversity of the realities of the sea and its professions. Aimed at pupils from troisième to preparatory classes, it validates a general maritime culture. It is a great success for the office: it grew from 2,209 candidates in 2024 to more than 2,800 in 2025.³

B / TEACHING MARITIME AFFAIRS

Part of the interest of our mapping lies in this first shift away from the tradition of earlier reports. The tone we adopted in the first part of the mapping stemmed mainly from the needs of the exercise; we did not judge the effectiveness of the schemes put in place over the past fifteen years or so, for lack of an assessment tool. To fill this gap, we will later propose the idea of a “National Quiz”. Whereas the tradition stops at the limits of the national education system, we want to extend it with a mapping of vocational pathways and training. We maintain that even when employment becomes the purpose of sea education, cultivating a maritime mindset is not necessarily set aside. In this respect, a few words from François Lambert, director of the ENSM, on the value of cultivating a certain “sea spirit” among maritime professionals: “ Operating navigation equipment does not require a knowledge of French maritime history; however, we believe that where there is heritage, there is a legacy. Following the signing of our objectives contract, we are trying to develop structures that strengthen our attachment to this maritime heritage”. We believe that the maritimisation of teaching is not judged solely by the presence of the sea in national education, but also by the way maritime actors strive to cultivate it in society. In other words, this change of approach, which takes employment as the paradigm for approaching the sea and its stakes in maritime teaching, will also be an opportunity to show that the maritimisation of teaching is also a problem that institutes training for seafaring professions face.

1 / MARITIMISATION THROUGH EXPERIENCE AND BRIDGES

Teaching the sea must also be able to mean opening a “sea path”. This perspective is very widely embraced by various actors, notably the French Navy, whether it opens bridges (between vocational baccalaureates and Navy careers) or offers periods of sea experience within non-maritime training.

2 / “MARITIME VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOLS” (LPM)

A specific network for training in seafaring professions is that of the Maritime Vocational High Schools (LPM). These institutions report directly to the Ministry of the Sea and comprise 12 public schools spread along the entire French coastline. Career prospects are mainly in merchant shipping, fishing, professional yachting and aquaculture. The table of enrolments in the various LPMs for the 2025-2026 academic year and a typical class timetable can be found in the Appendices, see Appendices 11 and 12.

3 / TRAINING FOR SEAFARING PROFESSIONS

The ENSM, a case of taking charge of maritime culture

of maritimisation and the development of a sea spirit and marine culture as of the school’s visibility; we do not wish to reduce one to the other, simply to recall this necessary perspective.

C / EDUCATION THROUGH AWARENESS-RAISING

The first shift, from a mapping of sea teaching to one of maritime teaching, supported the idea that the maritimisation of teaching is not judged solely by the presence of the sea in national education, but also by the way maritime actors strive to cultivate it by nourishing marine culture. This last part completes the justification of our report’s particular approach, that is, establishing awareness-raising as a pedagogical approach in order to assess its consequences. While the mapping of teaching became more supple in moving from sea teaching to maritime teaching, it becomes even more so in this last part. Before getting into the subject, let us note that the “coastal” nature of initiatives formed the basis of the Legohérel report’s finding. It was against this particular localisation of initiatives, and towards a generalised presence of the sea and its stakes, that the schemes and resources we have mentioned were deployed. Our shift with respect to that report therefore aims to build on the achievements of the generalisation of sea teaching while revisiting the pejorative interpretation of local initiatives. Because generalisation cannot discard all its component parts, we wish to recall that it is, for example, through awareness-raising that marine culture mainly takes root in the minds of the youngest primary school pupils. In our view, this education through awareness-raising is less a particular locality to be generalised than an extension of the educational perimeter, from extracurricular activities to leisure.

1 / MUNICIPAL AND CITIZEN INITIATIVES

Case study: the development of the Educational Marine Areas (AME) schemes

2 / RESEARCH GROUPS’ INITIATIVES

In practical terms, research institutes offer programmes raising awareness of contemporary maritime issues through popularisation. Here is a comprehensive inventory.

A particular case: the Collège de la Mer of the Institut Paul Ricard (IPR)

Rather than presenting the IPR’s “Collège de la Mer” as a special initiative compared with those of other research institutes, we want to use it as an opportunity for somewhat more precise detail, in order to better understand the local dynamics of education through awareness-raising. We maintain that young generations’ grasp of maritime issues cannot depend exclusively on national education; it requires the active involvement and expertise of scientific actors deeply rooted in the territory. The “Collège de la Mer” programme, recently rolled out by the Institut océanographique Paul Ricard as part of the Contrat de Baie de Toulon et des Îles d’Or, is a valuable example of the need for this educational relay. By targeting local lower secondary pupils (notably in Toulon and La Seyne-sur-Mer), the Institute contributes to extending the scope of classic pedagogy. Learning takes the form of repeated sessions — such as cycles of three half-days per class — combining theory and practical experience. This extracurricular approach immerses pupils directly in the study of the harbour that surrounds them every day, raising their awareness of overall water management, “from source to sea”. By bringing young pupils face to face with these ecosystems so that they can feel their richness and fragility, learning becomes a stimulus to maritime awareness. It is this direct, immersive contact, supervised by researchers, that gives the Institute its motto: “we protect better what we know ”⁵ .

PROPOSALS

This report stems from the observation that there is no tool for judging the effectiveness of these schemes. The so-called “classic” mapping set out to inventory the schemes developed since the early 2010s in response to the repeated observation that the sea and its stakes are absent from national education. The shift we made with respect to this tradition is twofold: adding to this classic mapping two others, that of maritime teaching in France and that of education through awareness-raising. Justified by the flawed logic that equates the maritimisation of curricula with an effective maritimisation of French pupils’ culture, this shift was not an occasion to revisit the largely descriptive needs of the teaching; we have indeed made no more precise assessment. We repeat once more: teaching as a whole goes beyond the limits of national education, especially when the object we seek to observe is as supple and labile as the sea and its stakes; the pedagogy of specialised training and awareness-raising also show that the maritimisation of students’ minds is being taken in hand.

1 / The National Marine Quiz

To address this lack of a tool, we propose the idea of a National Marine Quiz. This proposal arose during discussions with Mr P.-R. Ambrogi and Mr B. Gori. Our discussion settled on the following format: during one lesson, a marine quiz would be held nationally in order to assess the effectiveness of maritimisation at the end of lycée. Meeting the need for quantified survey data, this quiz could strengthen an existing national education partnership – we are thinking in particular of the French Navy – or provide an opportunity to forge new ones with private polling institutes.

2 / Building a genuine academic field of maritime studies in the humanities and social sciences

The growing importance of contemporary maritime issues makes it necessary to structure a genuine interdisciplinary field of maritime studies within the French public university. While marine sciences, technical training and operational approaches now have identified actors, the maritime humanities and social sciences remain fragmented, not very visible and insufficiently coordinated at national level. It appears necessary to encourage the creation of chairs, research centres, master’s degrees and specialised pathways combining maritime law, the law of the sea, geopolitics, maritime economics, international relations, maritime history, the environment and ocean governance. This structuring could rely in particular on partnerships between universities, grandes écoles, maritime institutions, economic actors and the administrations concerned.

3 / Strengthening the teaching of maritime law and the law of the sea

France must be able to train a new generation of specialised lawyers able to defend its strategic, economic and diplomatic interests. The issues linked to maritime disputes, sovereignty, trade routes, undersea resources, port infrastructure and international negotiations require high-level legal expertise. Strengthening training in maritime law and the law of the sea is all the more important because several recent signals point to a relative weakening of these disciplines in public higher education. The closure of the Centre de Droit Maritime et Océanique (CDMO) of Nantes Université and the absence of strong structuring in the Parisian academic landscape illustrate this fragility.

4 / Developing national coordination of maritime studies

The multiplicity of existing schemes reflects real dynamism but also a strong dispersion of initiatives. Better coordination between the various actors in maritime teaching and in raising awareness of ocean issues would strengthen the visibility, continuity and coherence of this educational policy. Creating a national network for maritime studies could make it possible to pool teaching resources, facilitate academic cooperation, encourage the mobility of teachers and researchers, strengthen links between secondary education, higher education, research and the professional world, and make maritime pathways more visible to students.

5 / Strengthening teachers’ in-service training on maritime issues

The growing presence of the sea in school curricula calls for a parallel deepening of teachers’ in-service training. While several schemes already exist thanks to the EAFCs, scientific partners and specialised institutions, this momentum could be amplified. Developing interdisciplinary modules on contemporary maritime issues, notably climate, biodiversity, sovereignty, the blue economy, geopolitics, energy resources and the law of the sea, would consolidate the place of the sea in everyday teaching practice.

6 / Consolidating awareness-raising and experimentation schemes

Teaching the sea does not rest solely on school curricula. Awareness-raising schemes, citizen science, Educational Marine Areas, maritime issues classes, voluntary-sector projects and research institutes’ initiatives play a major role in spreading a maritime culture among young generations. It appears necessary to give more support to these immersive, place-based approaches that allow pupils to experience marine ecosystems, coastal issues and contemporary environmental problems directly. This field-based pedagogy is an essential lever for lasting awareness.

7 / Making the sea a cross-cutting subject of general culture

The maritimisation of teaching cannot be limited to an exclusively scientific, environmental or professional approach. The sea is also a major historical, political, cultural and economic subject. Developing a genuine French maritime culture therefore means thinking of the sea as a cross-cutting subject running through all disciplines: history, geography, political science, law, economics, literature, philosophy, science and technology. This global approach would place maritime issues durably at the heart of the intellectual training of future citizens, decision-makers and public officials

Bibliographic information

Type

Report

Date

1 June 2026

Author

Hugo Sannier

Editor

Deep Blue Foundation

Original language

French

Original document

PDF, 167 pages

Full text

Partial transcription of the document (see note above)

← All publications