No more catching up and waiting. Make way for holidays and taking stock. On Saturday, thousands of high school students jostled at the gates of high schools, or on their smartphones, to discover the results of the baccalaureate catch-up. The students in the hot seat were able to find out if they were saved. They were not the only ones to scrutinize the announcements: it is partly on the evolutions of the number of admitted that the reform put in place in 2019 by the Macron government will be judged.
91.1% of baccalaureate candidates obtained their diploma, i.e. 2.8% less than in 2021. A finding “not entirely surprising” for the Minister of National Education and Youth, Pap Ndiaye. “This year is the first real year of the reform of the baccalaureate which is not hampered by the health crisis”, he said on Saturday, traveling to Val-de-Marne. Since the 2019 reform, the baccalaureate mark is based 40% on continuous assessment, deemed more “fair”, and 60% on final tests.
If we remove the two Covid-19 years, the trend seems to continue upwards. In 2019, a year spared by Covid-19, the success rate was 88.2%. Still, it is not possible to dissociate what, from the coronavirus or from the reform, gave this jump in the trend, observed in 2020, 2021 and 2022. The minister seems rather to welcome a return to scores with a slightly more marked failure: “It thwarts those who said that the continuous control was going to give extraordinary results. The new baccalaureate remains an important examination.”
In detail, all sectors have seen their admission rate fall compared to 2021. The Ministry of National Education lists 96.1% of candidates admitted to the general sector, 90.6% to the technological sector and 82.3% in the vocational stream, i.e. a drop of 1.5%, 4.5% and 4.5% respectively. But again, excluding the Covid-19 years, the upward trend in the success rate continues. Admissions are 5%, 2.4% more numerous than in 2019, in the first two sectors mentioned. The general stream leads less often to failure, unlike the technological stream.
With or without mention? Sometimes granting a slight advantage for certain post-baccalaureate admissions, and certain scholarships, obtaining a mention is also a closely scrutinized indicator. All sectors combined, 9% of candidates obtained the mention Very good, 19.5% the mention Good, 30.3% the mention Fairly good. 32.3% of students graduated without honors. The number of students crowned with these distinctions continues to increase compared to 2019.
