To unlock the secret of the baccalaureate marks, you have to go to Santorini. Not the Greek island, but National Education software. On this application reserved for proofreaders, Eglantine Dumont, a French teacher, discovers that the 35 specialty copies that she had corrected have all been raised by one point. His copy package, rated 7-18, now goes 8-19 out of 20.
“I have colleagues who already had averages of 12.5 to 13 on a pack, which is already a big average, and who still saw their copies increase by one to two points!” she wonders. “It becomes huge and it loses its meaning a bit. I find it extremely contemptuous for our work. It means that we consider that we have not corrected the copies correctly!”
Where do all these extra points come from? Those who grant them are the academy inspectors. Their objective: to make up for the differences in average between different subjects or different correctors, by modifying the scores. National Education calls it harmonization, and has been doing it for a long time. But the novelty this year is that this operation can now be done in two clicks, on tens of thousands of copies at a time.
Something to worry about Eric Nicollet, of the Unitary Union of Educational Inspection (SUI-FSU): “it goes too far because there is no control: we could very well target an average in advance, for example, so that a discipline is displayed at such pitch to be more presentable.”
Contacted, the Ministry of National Education disputes any targeting of results, and insists on the transparency of the process.
“Previously, proofreaders were not automatically notified when there was a harmonization on their set of copies. Whereas now, via Santorini, they have the opportunity to see the detail.”
Ministry of Educationto France 2
The department adds that the harmonization can be done as much by adding points as by removing them from the candidates. Not quite true in practice according to Jean-Rémi Girard, of the National Union of High Schools and Colleges (SNALC): “in practice the harmonization is done upwards: it is a question of avoiding massive repetitions which are very expensive for the system. And today we are on bac rates that must be kept very high.
In 2021, the general baccalaureate had a success rate of over 97%. That is 21 points more than 25 years ago.