Holberton > Articles by: Alexandra Jouis

Author: Alexandra Jouis

Holberton School is partnering with Actual group to open new campuses in France!

Posted on by Alexandra Jouis

Holberton School is continuing to expand its operations in France! 

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve signed a new partnership with Actual group to open more schools in France. The first one will open in June in Laval, followed by a second in Toulouse in September 2021. 

With more than 30 years of experience, 300 agencies, 1,450 employees, and 650 million euros in revenue, the Actual group is one of the most successful French staffing and recruiting agencies. We’re very excited to join forces with an important player in the field of employment. 

The Actual group will help to place students on the labor market, while Holberton School will ensure technical excellence amongst the students.


The Actual group has joined forces with Holberton School to set up an innovative
12-to-18-month training course on digital and web technologies.

More and more companies are starting their transformation and accelerating their digitization. To meet this exponential need, it’s become vital to train more people for digital professions, which have become popular and rare on the French job market.  

“Actual group aims to provide employment opportunities for those in research so that they can provide highly valued skills to companies,” said Samuel Tual, Chairman of the Actual group. “Quite naturally, it seemed logical to us to explore the digital sector. Today, these professions are struggling due to a lack of skills.”

The Actual group already has schools and training offers that specialize in three-way employee-actual-employer relations, covering time-sharing, portage, and temping. This partnership will complete their offer, allowing them to focus on digital, tech, and web and to train the highly-skilled digital talent that the French economy needs.

[French] Interview of Samuel Tual, Chairman of the Actual group

“I’m very pleased with this initiative,” said Samuel Tual, Chairman of the Actual group. “By enabling people to train for tomorrow’s skills, we’ll help companies of all sizes to meet the enormous challenge of digital transformation. Beyond training and educational content, it’s about access to employment.”

With the Actual group, Holberton School’s students will be well-trained and well-supported so that they can quickly find a job after their studies. 

The school will begin welcoming its first cohort of students in June 2021 in Laval.

Stay tuned!

UNESCO talk: life-long learning in the 4th industrial revolution

Posted on by Alexandra Jouis
Sylvain Kalache at UNESCO annual International Youth Conference in Jamaica

Our co-founder, Sylvain Kalache, was invited to speak with the audience during the UNESCO annual International Youth Conference in Jamaica, joining an audience from the US, Germany, Russia, Jamaica, and Mexico. Other great speakers included Saadia Sánchez, UNESCO Cluster Office for the Caribbean; Hon Alando Terrylonge, Jamaica Minister of State, Ministry of Culture Gender Entertainment and Sport; Everton Hannam, Secretary-General, Jamaica National Commission for UNESCO.

During this conference, he shared tips on becoming an efficient learner in the 4th industrial revolution. 

“The 4th industrial revolution is different from the past industrial revolutions because the pace of change is happening at an exponential rate. And while our world drastically evolved, our education system has not. A key element for all of us is to become lifelong learners, and most of the knowledge you need is available at your fingertips.” – Sylvain Kalache, co-founder of Holberton School.

Sylvain argues that access to knowledge is no longer an issue for many learners. Students have access to peers, instructors, libraries, and obviously the largest source of information that ever existed: the Internet. An ocean of knowledge is now accessible at our fingertips, which completely flips our world and education! Memorizing information shall no longer be the focus. With the right guidance, students can be teaching themselves; but this is not an easy task. It is a challenge to come up with the proper search engine request, and then filter the results to understand what is right, wrong, or incomplete. Fake news is an excellent illustration of the challenge.

The world of today and tomorrow requires a different set of skills to be professionally successful. Sylvain reviewed the skills that learners shall focus on: 

  • Problem-solving;
  • Critical thinking;
  • Creativity;
  • Professional communication; 
  • People skills.

These skills can be developed with progressive education-based programs where students learn by integrated multi-level projects, action-oriented tasks, collaborating, and working on projects in groups.

The audience loved the presentation, which was summarized with a proverb that our co-founder thought translated very well to education: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” 

The same applies to education: become a Lifelong Learner!

Full recording of this event:

Full recording of Sylvain’s speech, here.

Thank you again, Jamaica Federation of Unesco Clubs, Centers and Associations, for having Holberton at your annual conference.