FIRST ASSESSMENT
OF THE PASS CULTURE
SCHEME
Public thematic report
December 2024
2
Executive Summary
A free app with location-specific services, the pass Culture scheme allows all young
people aged between 15 and 18 to receive an individual budget to access cultural and artistic
activities or products.
Most of the observations in this report concern this individual component of the pass
Culture scheme. The report only deals marginally with the 'collective' component of the
scheme, which is implemented in schools.
The report analyses how young people have used this new tool and draws up a first
assessment of the results, three years after its widespread launch, in light of the broad and
ambitious objectives that were announced when the scheme was launched.
While 84 % of 18-20 year olds use the pass Culture scheme, it has less
impact on young people who are the most removed from culture
Launched on a trial basis in a few departments in February 2019 by the ministry of
culture, the pass Culture scheme was rolled out in a particularly short space of time. In May
2021, the individual component of the pass Culture scheme (a budget of €300 per beneficiary)
was extended to all young people aged 18 throughout France, before being extended to those
aged 15 to 17 on 1 January 2022 (a budget of €80 over three years).
In addition, the collective component of the scheme was introduced in January 2022 in
the form of a budget allocated to each class in proportion to the number of pupils, to fund
artistic and cultural education projects. Initially open to classes from the third year to the end
of secondary school, the collective component was extended to the first two years of secondary
school in September 2023.
Budget amounts for the individual and collective parts of the pass Culture scheme
Source: Court of Accounts; CAP: certificat d'aptitude professionnelle (vocational aptitude
certificate)
Collective component
Class
Amount allocated
per pupil
6ème
(11-12 year olds)
€25
5ème
(12-13 year olds)
€25
4ème
(13-14 year olds)
€25
3ème
(14-15 year olds)
€25
2nde
–
CAP
(15-16 year olds)
€30
1ère (16-17 year
olds)
€20
Terminale
(17-18 year olds)
€20
Individual component
Age
Amount
Budget
validity
period
15
€20
€20
16
€30
€30
17
€30
€30
18
€300
€300
Total: €380
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All young people are eligible for the individual pass Culture scheme based solely on their
age.
In June 2024, three years after its roll-out, 82 % of young people aged 18 and over were
registered (84 % in September 2024). A total of 4.2 million young people have registered on
the pass Culture app since 2019.
Coverage rate by age (June 2024)
Source: SAS pass Culture, "Metabase" dashboards
This real success in terms of overall coverage should not, however, mask the fact that
the pass Culture scheme has only partially succeeded in reaching young people who are less
familiar with cultural practices. Only 68 % of young people from working-class backgrounds,
i.e. whose parents have few or no qualifications and work in blue-collar or non-managerial
jobs, have activated their pass. The aim of enrolling as many young people as possible has
thus far prevailed over the objective of generalising access to cultural offerings. Based on this
observation, in May 2024, the Minister of Culture asked the Chairman of the pass Culture
company to propose an action plan aimed at strengthening the impact of the scheme among
certain priority audiences, in particular young people not attending school, from 2025.
Books remain popular, while films and music are showing slight growth
Beneficiaries mainly use their individual budget to buy books. Since the scheme was
introduced, books have accounted for between 42 % and 55 % of the amounts spent each
quarter. The share of manga in book purchases fell from almost 40 % in 2021 to 20 % in 2024.
Literature (including young adult fiction, poetry and drama) has accounted for 40 % of book
purchases since 2024.
Young people often use their pass Culture budget to buy cinema and concert tickets. By
contrast, other forms of live performance (theatre, dance, circus, etc.) are struggling to reach
new audiences (on average, 7 % of young people have booked at least one non-musical
performance via the app. The major public operators in the performing arts sector seem
reluctant to open up to users of the pass Culture scheme, both in terms of the range of shows
likely to be of interest to them and the number of seats made available. Only 55 % of museums
are included in the pass Culture offer. A similar observation can be made for monuments, art
centres and libraries. While the free or reduced rates offered to young people by these venues
explain the low take-up of the pass Culture scheme, it could nevertheless be used more by
cultural players as a promotional tool among young people.
4
Breakdown of pass Culture purchases by category of cultural use - change between
2021 and 2024
Source: pass Culture usage data
Legend: The Music category includes concert tickets, festival tickets, the purchase of
music on physical or digital media and the purchase of musical instruments. The
Audiovisual category includes cinema screenings and films purchased on
physical or digital media.
Note: in the first quarter of 2024, 56 % of the amounts spent by users
of the pass Culture scheme were book purchases.
Limited impact on young people's cultural practices over time
The individual pass Culture budget gives users full freedom to choose their own
practices. The organisation in charge of this pass, the company pass Culture, does not have
a mandate to guide the quality of the offers available for the individual component. This lack of
effective control as to whether offers are genuine cultural experiences has, for example, led to
the funding of escape game activities totalling nearly €16 million since the launch of the
scheme, before the ministry of culture requested, further to an investigation by the Court of
Accounts, the delisting of the 500 providers offering this type of activity, despite it being
ineligible.
Instead, the pass Culture scheme has been structured around the objective of
diversifying cultural practices, which the ministry has never defined, but which in any case does
not take into account the quality of what is on offer (for example, if a young person buys a book
and then an
escape game activity
,
this objective has been achieved). To encourage this
diversification, the company has developed a number of editorial and algorithmic
recommendation tools, which have a very limited impact. Nearly 90 % of purchases were made
on the basis of an initial consultation of the search engine, and not on the basis of suggestions
put forward by the application.
As a result, the main impact of the pass Culture scheme observed among the first cohorts
is rather an intensification of cultural practices already well established among young people.
This intensification confirms the risk of a windfall effect when the pass Culture scheme is used
by young people who already have a higher cultural capital, particularly through their family
environment. Unlike the collective component of the scheme, which relies on the work of
teachers, mediation for the individual component does not appear to be sufficiently developed
to counteract the pre-existing structural inequalities in access to culture, which the pass Culture
scheme reveals and cannot in itself resolve.
The survey commissioned by the Court of Accounts also highlighted the difficulty of
sustaining new cultural practices generated by the scheme. In fact, once the pass Culture
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budget has been used up or expired, only 38 % of users continue to take part in the activities
they have discovered and 37 % continue to go to the places they visited thanks to the
application. Nearly 80 % of them no longer use the pass Culture app. As a result, and as there
is no follow-up of the cohort of beneficiaries who have left the scheme, the lasting nature of
the intensification of practices brought about by the pass Culture scheme is not certain.
Generally speaking, the ministry of culture has not given itself the means to evaluate
changes in young people's practices after using the pass Culture scheme. It did not carry out
a study of practices prior to its launch, nor did it make it compulsory to complete the
questionnaire on these practices before registering on the application. This omission makes it
difficult to assess the impact of the pass Culture scheme and led the Court of Accounts to
commission a survey of cultural practices among 5,000 young people. In their responses to
the Court of Accounts' observations, the ministry of culture and the company pass Culture
have undertaken to make completing the questionnaire on initial cultural practices a pre-
requisite for benefiting from the scheme, by the end of 2024. This first stage will need to be
supplemented by the creation of cohort follow-up studies to assess the impact of the scheme
on young people's practices over time.
In the longer term, the scheme's success depends on greater coordination between the
individual and collective components, which currently operate separately. The next cohorts of
young people will only benefit from the individual share at the end of an artistic and cultural
education programme starting in the first year of secondary school. The individual component
will thus become the culmination of this pathway, which will have raised young people's
awareness of the diversity of cultural offerings they will later be able to access independently.
The full impact of the scheme can only be assessed once the beneficiaries have completed
the entire programme.
Expenditure that needs to be better controlled
Apart from the contribution made by suppliers to finance the pass Culture platform, which
accounts for around 6 % of its total revenues, the pass Culture scheme is financed by the
State, a far cry from the initial objective of 20 % State funding and 80 % from other sources.
From a budgetary point of view, the pass Culture scheme is like an over-the-counter
expense, which has grown very rapidly. As a result, budget appropriations for the individual
portion have increased from €92 million in 2021 (confirmed) to €244 million in 2024 (forecast):
the total even rises to €324 million when including the collective portion of the scheme
(€80 million). This growth in expenditure was poorly anticipated, as the ministry of culture's
appropriations to fund the individual component were systematically underfunded.
Budgetary expenditure on the pass Culture scheme (CP, € million)
Source: Court of Accounts, June 2024
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Now that the ramp-up period for the pass Culture scheme (individual component),
directly linked to the rapid roll-out of the scheme, has ended, decisions must be taken to stop
the uncontrolled growth in pass Culture budget appropriations. Against a backdrop of
deteriorating public finances, a number of ways of making savings can be considered, including
reducing the amount allocated to young people aged 18; means-testing; targeting beneficiaries
according to social criteria (maintenance grant holders) or territorial criteria (priority
neighbourhoods identified in urban policy, rural areas).
A management and governance model in need of reform
In addition, the governance of the pass Culture scheme needs to be reviewed in depth.
As a first step, the transformation of the company pass Culture into a State operator should be
effective from 2025, given that public funding accounts for more than 90 % of the company's
financing model. This transformation will enable the ministry of culture to strengthen its
management of the scheme. Parliament and the public will be better informed thanks to the
budget documents appended to the Finance Act.
Ultimately, the activities and staff of pass Culture are to be brought into the ministry of
culture, which must reclaim this mission. This change will enable the company's regional teams
to report in full to the regional cultural affairs departments (DRAC). The ministry will also be
able to develop the use of data from users of the scheme, while ensuring full protection of the
information collected in order to safeguard the personal data of entire generations of young
people.
Lastly, and in any event, it does not seem appropriate to envisage a further extension of
new areas of development for the pass Culture scheme, which, first and foremost, needs to be
consolidated and improved.
7
Recommendations
Strengthen the strategic oversight of the scheme
3.
Immediately include the company pass Culture in the list of State operators before bringing
its teams and missions into the ministry of culture in a second stage
(
ministries of culture,
budget and public accounts, 2025).
Pending this move:
4.
Enhance the next objectives and performance contract for 2025-2027 of the company pass
Culture with more qualitative indicators (in particular on free offers or those that include a
mediation component, or partnerships with players working for social inclusion and in the
socio-educational field)
(
ministry of culture, company pass Culture, 2025)
.
5.
Set up a system for sharing all the usage data collected by the company pass Culture with
the ministry of culture
(
company pass Culture, ministry of culture, 2025).
Control expenditure on the pass Culture scheme
2.
Include in the Finance Act, from 2025, funding envelopes for the pass Culture scheme that
are consistent with the need to control expenditure and a possible recalibration of the
scheme
(ministry of culture, ministry of the budget and public accounts, company pass
Culture, 2025
).
Develop the role of mediation in the services on offer
1.
In sectors that are further removed from users' usual practices (performing arts, museums,
etc.), work with cultural players to develop offers that include a mediation component and
highlight them on the application using recommendations
(
company pass Culture, ministry
of culture, 2025
).