France to overhaul the baccalaureate in tricky school reform
PARIS: For over two centuries French students have faced a grueling rite of passage: the week-long high school exit exam and its infamous philosophical essay, which bedevils college hopefuls with stumpers like “Do we always know what we desire?” The philosophy brain-twister will remain, but the government has unveiled proposals for a major revamp of the rest of the baccalaureate, tackling a “national monument” based on a structure created under Napoleon in 1808.
Emmanuel Macron pledged to overhaul the Bac, as it is known, during his presidential campaign, saying it was failing to adequately prepare teenagers for university and the modern job market. Once in university, roughly 60 percent of students fail to secure their diplomas marking the first three years of study. The proposed reform presented this week, which would halve the number of Bac tests to just five including a new 30-minute oral exam, aims to orientate students toward specific degrees sooner. The three broad subject choices-science, literature or social sciences would also be eliminated.
Before their final year students would choose two specific “major” subjects as well as two “minors” alongside the standard curriculum-a system that will sound familiar to American college graduates. And instead of being based purely on results in the final exams, the new Bac grade would incorporate marks and test results obtained throughout the two final years of school. Even class schedules will change by 2021 if the reforms are passed, with the year now divided into two semesters instead of three trimesters, and the tests spread over several months instead of a single week.
‘Better graduates’
The government hopes that introducing specialization at a younger age will help students better choose their university-where places are currently free and guaranteed to anyone who passes the bac ordeal. For Pierre Mathiot, former president at the Lille branch of the prestigious Sciences Po university who drafted the overhaul, students will be able to secure a high school degree under “more realistic conditions”. “I’m not saying there should be fewer baccalaureates, but that there should be ‘better’ graduates... and that the average Bac grade should better reflect a student’s actual level,” he said Thursday. He also argued that it was more forgiving for students, since strong results in one area of the test could make up for lessthan-stellar work elsewhere. The goal is also to save money: mobilizing supervisors and setting up mass testing centers cost the state 57 million euros ($71 million) last year, French daily Liberation reported. But critics say students will be forced to make career choices at too young an age. And the ideal of scholastic equality is also at risk, they say, since wealthier students will probably be better prepared to navigate the choices now open to them than those in poorer areas.