In France, 520,000 high school students take the Bac de Philosophie test on Wednesday June 15. Since its reform in 2019, the baccalaureate mark is based 40% on continuous assessment and 60% on final exams (written and oral French, passed in Première class, philosophy, specialty exams and the grand oral , passed in Terminale). End-of-year examinations also exist in different forms in Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany. Overview
>> Bac de philo 2022: “I barely revised”, “it went by the wayside” … Candidates explain why they are not betting on this test
In Belgium, end-of-year exams disrupted by the lack of teachers
End-of-year exams are currently taking place and in places they are disrupted by the shortage of teachers. There are even events canceled in Wallonia and Flanders. The Belgian press reports cancellations on both sides of the linguistic border. In the Belgian daily The Free we can for example read the testimony of this professor of Physics who has been absent several times this year for health reasons and who has not been sufficiently replaced. He explains that his students in the 4th general option Science, the equivalent of the second, did not have enough lessons to be evaluated during the final exam, which he therefore canceled. But we are not talking about the equivalent of the baccalaureate. In Belgium, pupils are assessed in June at the end of almost every cycle. There are also no massive cancellations of exams, the government defends itself, pointing more to problems related to certain subjects such as languages or geography.
This situation nevertheless illustrates the shortage of teachers, which is a big problem, particularly in Flanders. According to the federation of private schools, which represents 2,400 schools for nearly a million children and adolescents, certain subjects were not taught for an entire term this year due to a lack of teachers.
About one in seven teachers absent: it’s a lot but less than last week https://t.co/gRSFLw0JS6 pic.twitter.com/GNcfixHQ2W
— La Libre (@lalibrebe) February 2, 2022
In Belgium, the recruitment of retired teachers or students who have not yet graduated has been authorized under certain conditions. What largely explains this phenomenon is the increase in the school population, which has risen by nearly 5% over the past ten years.
In the United Kingdom, a test experiment 100% digital for the patent
The young English have resumed since mid-May the path of the examination centers, after two years without a baccalaureate or certificate, therefore returning to the classic diploma. Two thousand five hundred college students will nevertheless take a double exam this year. A hundred establishments have been selected to participate in an experiment that will not replace the real examination. The 2,500 lucky candidates will therefore have to pass a “fake” English, science and math test online, in addition to their “real” patent. The test is supervised by the AQA, the organization which supervises the patent and the baccalaureate.
The test is presented as progressive. That is to say that the difficulty of the questions asked should adapt to the answers already provided by the candidate for ultimately assign him a grade that sticks as closely as possible to his level. Even if the director of the AQA hopes to put an end to the ultra solemn atmosphere of the patent, the baccalaureate, the 100% digital questionnaire will still be held in an establishment or an examination center. The experiment should last three years.
The exam regulator hopes to make such exams the norm from 2025 for a multitude of reasons. If the systems had been deployed before the pandemic, there would have been no need to cancel exams two years in a row. Technology would make it possible to deal with the unexpected. There is this idea of accuracy, as we said, adapting to the level of the candidate. Then there is the ecological argument. Between the 12 million sheets of paper printed, the delivery of copies, the packaging: more than 600 tonnes of CO2 and 30 tonnes of plastic could be saved each year. But even if the experiment proves conclusive, there will always be a written dimension to the end-of-year exams. The organizers are keen to preserve the handwriting skills of middle and high school students.
In Germany, obtaining the baccalaureate is easier in certain Lander
There is no system in Germany equivalent to that of national education. Education is the sole responsibility of the Länder. As a result, from one Land to another, students are not equal when it comes to the baccalaureate. In some regions like Bavaria it is difficult to obtain. Pupils consider themselves wronged for their entrance to universities. Depending on the region where they come from, all students do not have the same chances of obtaining the baccalaureate.
>> Parcoursup: how access to university is organized in Germany and Italy
On average, 51% of Germans have the baccalaureate and can therefore study at university. But the regional differences are high. In Hamburg, 55% of an age group has the baccalaureate, against only 32% in Bavaria. Of course, that doesn’t mean that Bavarian pupils are worse off at school. But quite simply that the system is much harder, the students are more severely marked there, and they are therefore less likely to enter a university, a path which remains very elitist in the country. Remember that in Germany, apprenticeship is much more developed than in France, and that it often remains the royal road to entering the labor market.
Of course, there are criticisms of these inequalities. Especially since the consequences are heavy. You should know that in Germany, only the mark of the baccalaureate decides the chances of obtaining a place at the university for the most requested subjects such as medicine, architecture, law, etc. Not only are Bavarians less likely to pass the baccalaureate, but those who pass it generally have lower grades than northern Germans. However, the demand for medicine is such that only students who have obtained a baccalaureate with a mark of 20 out of 20 have a chance of obtaining a place in a medical school. It is not because one comes from a reputedly difficult high school that one has a better chance in Germany of pursuing more prestigious studies.