For the moment, there is no question of switching the tests from partial to distance. This is the current discourse in universities. Almost all the faculties do not change anything when they return to school, despite the worrying epidemic situation. The courses and the exams will take place in the rooms.
But some students are worried: what to do if they catch the Covid, just before taking their exams? Waiting for the make-up session next June would penalize them since the selection for the following years is made in the spring. Guillaume Gellé, vice-president of the CPU, the Conference of University Presidents, wants to be reassuring and reminds us of the procedure to be followed in the event of contamination: “If you have the Covid and you actually have a positive test, you must first report it to the dedicated unit of your establishment. This is necessary for support by the establishment. You will be subjected to isolation and prevented from passing that exam session, and you will have a surrogate session. “
AT what will these “surrogate sessions” look like? It will depend on the universities, autonomous institutions that organize things as they wish. A written exam can turn into an oral one, a few weeks later for example. The University of Strasbourg has scheduled slots on Saturdays for students who are ill on the day of their partial. As for the rules for contact cases, the heads of the faculties await the details of the government, expected at the end of the week.
Depending on the length of isolation, young people may or may not come and sit for their tests on the scheduled date. But all the players in higher education, students and teachers, agree: everything must be done to avoid reliving remote exams, as was the case in 2020.
AT Aix-Marseille University, lectures and tutorials will be carried out remotely the first 15 days of the year, to free up space, explains Lionel Nicod, vice-president of Aix-Marseille universities : “To be able to preserve our face-to-face exams, we need to have a certain number of rooms available to guarantee the rules of distancing and health security for the students and the staff who will supervise. By switching a certain number of distance courses, rooms are freed up for cohorts that are large enough like psychology and law cohorts. So that they can take their exams during the first two weeks of January. ”
Maintaining face-to-face exams is a priority for Lionel Nicod: “It has always been our leitmotif to succeed in securing these face-to-face exams. Because we know that face-to-face exams are vectors of equity between students. Distance solutions, even if they can be interesting, include There are limits in this area. We have requests, especially from students, to guarantee face-to-face exams in order to be able to maintain this fairness. ” For the moment, there is no question at the University of Aix-Marseille of extending beyond this fortnight of distance learning.