Batissiel is an annual competition comprising teams of junior high school pupils (and technological high school students), aged 12 to 16, whose school programme, in its second and fourth years, includes a short introductory series of courses on working life: the various types of activities, the occupations, the training and degrees necessary to access them. It can also be entered by these pupils within the course of their technology classes. Launched by Fédération Française du Bâtiment with the active partnership of the Ministry of Education, this annual event aims at introducing these students to the variety of professional opportunities within the building sector and public work industry, and promoting its often ill-perceived jobs.
The competitors are asked to design and build the model of an innovative structure relating to the topics dealt with in their technology courses, and focus on such issues as energy saving devices and sustainable development. The project and its creators are evaluated by a regional jury; those who pass are enlisted to the national competition that takes place in Paris every June, before a jury of entrepreneurs and representatives of the Ministry. At stake, for the winners, exciting prizes such as sets of computers, PDS, touch pads, with which to equip their classrooms. The latest Batissiel competition, the finals of which took place in June 2013, involved 6,600 young people hailing from 223 classes all over the French territory.