Pierre Mathiot advocates a new approach, a new way of seeing the baccalaureate since the tests were reformed.
“There are things to adjust, to evolve in order to correct small flaws”, admitted Pierre Mathiot, director of the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) of Lille and co-chairman of the committee for monitoring the reform of the baccalaureate, on franceinfo. The baccalaureate continues on Wednesday June 14 with philosophy, a test that traditionally opened the ball.
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Some 500,000 senior high school students in general and technological courses are working this Wednesday morning on one of the three philosophy subjects planned for the baccalaureate. “new formula”, decided in 2019 by Jean-Michel Blanquer, then Minister of Education. But the new baccalaureate, which, for the first time since the reform, came into full effect this year, started in March with two specialty tests which account for two thirds of the results.
“Obviously, philosophy, at the time, opened in a way the sequence of written exams of the baccalaureate on which the whole of the baccalaureate was played”, explained Pierre Mathiot. A test to which the students will go with less stress, recognized the co-chairman of the committee for monitoring the reform of the baccalaureate, pleading for “a little more relaxed approach” of this examination.
“We have in France a kind of doctrine which would consist in saying that you have to be absolutely stressed to pass tests”
Pierre Mathiotat franceinfo
But the philosophy“don’t count as butter”underlines the director of the Institute of Political Studies (IEP) of Lille, “there is still an important issue, if only to improve his results, to obtain a mention”. The philosophy relates to a coefficient of 4 for candidates for the technological baccalaureate and 8 for candidates for the general baccalaureate (out of a total of 100). After philosophy, high school students in the general and technological stream will take the grand oral test, between June 19 and 30 and will know their results on July 4.
Not announcing March results just yet
“A reform of this importance revealed a number of small difficulties”, pointed out, however, Pierre Mathiot, admitting that “adjustments are needed”. He pleads in particular for a rebalancing of the coefficients between the March and June tests. This axis of improvement will be one of the proposals that he will submit at the end of June to Pap Ndiaye, Minister of Education.
The baccalaureate is therefore no longer synonymous with this school-leaving examination. The results of the March tests were announced in April, leaving high school students the possibility of practically calculating their final average, which induces a relaxation as evidenced by the high rate of absenteeism since the April school holidays. “Absences are perhaps linked to the fact that the students who received their marks on the important coefficients, said to themselves that it was no longer worth going to high school, the betting is done”admitted Pierre Mathiot.
The other track mentioned by the co-chairman of the bac reform monitoring committee is to announce the results of the March tests at the time of the final results, in July. “The idea would be to look at the effects that it would have, if the students only knew their grades when the baccalaureate results were obtained, at the beginning of July”explained Pierre Mathiot.