Nearly 720,000 baccalaureate candidates take their final exams. The results will be announced on July 4.
This is the home stretch for the 718,723 candidates for the 2023 baccalaureate. Students in the general and technological final year will have four hours, Wednesday June 14, to work on the philosophy test, before the big oral, between June 19 and June 30. The young people on the professional path follow the tests all week, with French and history-geography, on Tuesday, June 13. Exam centers are open in 108 different countries.
>> Find the results of the bac 2023 from July 4
64 years separate the youngest from the oldest candidate
More than half of aspiring baccalaureate holders, 390,710, are in the general stream (+2.5% compared to 2022), 182,642 pass the professional baccalaureate (-1.9%) and 145,371 the technological baccalaureate (+2, 4%). Finally, 18,930 so-called “free” candidates. If the vast majority of candidates are 17 or 18 years old, some are very advanced, the youngest is 12 years old, in the academy of Versailles. At the other extreme, the oldest is 76 years old and will take the test in the Bordeaux Academy.
In addition, 547,146 first year students (+0.8%) will take their advance French test on Thursday, June 15. Some 87,000 correctors will be mobilized for all the tests in the different tracks. They are paid five euros gross per copy or 9.60 euros per hour for the oral tests. 2.5 million copies will be digitized and corrected by teachers.
95 specialties
From now on, a certificate of modern languages (LV) will be issued to all candidates for the general and technological baccalaureate, for LV1 and LV2. It certifies their level in comprehension and expression, oral and written. “The objective is for the student himself to know where he is at the end of his course and that he is an ‘opposable’ document. He will be able to produce this document, it is an official certificate from the Ministry of Education. “National education which will allow him in higher education, in his job search, to report a level duly observed throughout his school year, both in writing and orally”explains Édouard Geffray, director general of school education.
For the professional baccalaureate, four specialties have appeared, bringing their number to 95. Thus, bac pro “dental prosthesis technician” or “animation – childhood and the elderly” will for example appear at the start of the 2023 school year. .
18% of the final grade
For the first time since the 2019 baccalaureate reform, the calendar is proceeding as originally planned, after several years disrupted by the Covid-19 crisis. The specialty tests, which count for a third of the final grade, took place in March. With the continuous assessment, a good number of pupils in the general and technological pathways already know what their grade will be approximately. They must still pass the philosophy and the great oral. These two tests count for 18% of the final mark.
Some students have done their little calculation to establish what minimum mark they must have in these tests to get their baccalaureate, or a mention. End of the suspense on July 4, with, as tradition dictates, the posting of the results, in high schools. Candidates who will obtain a mark between 8 and 10, the remedial session will take place from July 5 to 7.
91% success rate
For the candidate, however, the stress of the exam must be put into perspective. Moreover, the baccalaureate success rate is over 90%. Last year, it was 91% for all sectors combined (compared to 95% in 2020 and 88% in 2019, and 85.7% ten years before, in 2011). For the general baccalaureate alone, the success rate was 96% last year (compared to 97.6% in 2020). It was 90.4% on the technological track and 82.2% on the professional track. Thus, in 2021, 82.8% of an age group had a baccalaureate (3.6 points less than in 2020), according to figures from the ministry.
This was obviously not the case during the first baccalaureate, instituted by a decree of March 17, 1808. Its first edition, in the form of only oral tests, took place in 1809. The first holders of this diploma were only 31 at the time. The first baccalaureate, Julie-Victoire Daubié, obtained her diploma in 1861, at the age of 37.