Bac 2021: "The transition to continuous testing is not a downgrading of its quality"

Two years since the baccalaureate has paid the price for the Covid-19 epidemic.

Completely passed to continuous assessment last year, it is still greatly facilitated this time, since in philosophy, the only written examination maintained and organized this Thursday, it is the best mark between the school report and the final test that will be kept.

In March, the specialties were passed to continuous assessment, which weighs 82% of the final mark.

There remains the grand oral and its coefficient 10, a great novelty of the diploma, which starts on Monday.

“It doesn't mean much anymore, the bac.

I'm going there to go, but in real life, I already have it and I think more about how to celebrate it, than how to get it, ”said a high school student from Herblay (Val-d'Oise), cross this Thursday morning just before the philosophy, and which sums up the feelings of many of the 525,000 candidates across France.

Is this desacralization of the first certifying diploma in France a lasting phenomenon?

No, for Bruno Poucet, professor of education at the University of Picardy.

Read also Beginning of the baccalaureate exams: but what is philosophy for?

“It's a purely circumstantial impression, due to emergency arrangements due to the epidemic.

These are the political compromises of a time.

I would add that the transition to continuous assessment is not a downgrading of its quality: at the university, part of the teaching is sanctioned in this way, ”analyzes the researcher.

Who recognizes, however, that it is no longer a complicated challenge.

"A ritual of passage"

“40 years ago, 20% of a generation had the baccalaureate. Today, it is 85% - excluding Covid-19, ”he continues. Can the great oral make it less accessible? " It is not the goal. Moreover, it is more of a… small oral, 20 minutes, ”replies Bruno Poucet, in comparison to the four-hour oral exams of the grandes écoles. On the other hand, the diploma has for a few years been crowned with a very symbolic status, which the Covid has not, or little, scratched.

“It has become a ritual of passage. Before, it was the Certificate of Primary Studies, then the national service. They have disappeared, now it's the bac ”, develops Bruno Poucet. “When we have it,” he continues, “we pretend to be afraid by going to discover the results, we hug with friends and we party. In the minds of teenagers - and their parents - it is not nothing to have the bac. "