Nicole Belloubet launches investigation after “abnormally low” grades given to students at a Jewish high school

Several elected officials have called on the Minister of National Education to obtain clarification on the facts. “A grading bias” was observed for “15 students” at the private high school under contract Yabné in Paris.

On Thursday, July 11, Education Minister Nicole Belloubet requested the opening of an administrative investigation following accusations of discrimination against students at a Parisian Jewish high school during the 2024 baccalaureate oral exam.“Many of you have alerted me to this situation. As soon as I learned of the facts, I asked my services to launch a thorough investigation. If the facts were proven, they would be intolerable in our School. And I will not let anything go,” she wrote on X.

On the same social network, lawyer Patrick Klugman, who “has been mandated to monitor the situation”, claims that the private high school under contract Yabné “found a bias in the grading of 15 of its students who took the oral baccalaureate specialty exam in front of two juries from the same examination center in Paris”. “We are talking about a difference of 9 points out of 20 on average compared to the 123 other candidates from the high school who appeared before other juries. This difference, which cannot be explained either statistically or pedagogically, gives rise to suspicions of discrimination,” continued the lawyer.

He specifies that the high school, in relation with the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), “requested that an administrative investigation be opened and that the discriminatory grades be set aside so as not to harm the students”.

Several elected officials have contacted the Minister of National Education to obtain clarification on the facts and to denounce, if they were to be proven, a situation “extremely serious”. “I dare not believe that examiners from Paris 18 engaged in such discrimination. An investigation is indeed necessary very quickly @NBelloubet Thank you for your responsiveness”, said Caroline Yadan, Renaissance MP for the eighth constituency of French people living outside France.

These students from the Jewish high school under contract Yabné, located in Paris, took their baccalaureate exams in a public high school in the 18th arrondissement of the capital. Former socialist minister Laurence Rossignol, senator, has ordered the Minister of Education to react on X. “If the facts and the anti-Semitism are proven, it is extremely serious. If it is a rumor, it must be put to an end.”she wrote.