From 17 January, high school students and students in reorientation will be able to submit their post-baccalaureate orientation wishes. Set up in January 2018, the platform that replaced Admission post-bac has been the subject of a lot of criticism since its launch. These criticisms reach the ears of the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, and more particularly those of Jérôme Teillard, the Parcoursup project manager at the Ministry. Improvements made, interest in new features, training commitments... He answers our questions.
LE PARISIEN. Every year, improvements are made to the platform. Can you still do better?
JÉRÔME TEILLARD. Yes, of course, we must always improve the service provided to users! We are constantly in a process of continuous improvement, based on listening and dialogue with high school students and parents. This is normal, because the specificity of Parcoursup means that each year a new generation of high school students who, by design, were not there the previous year, discover the platform themselves. We are constantly working on information, diversifying the ways in which we exchange with candidates and adapting to their new expectations.
Sometimes, the technical or interface improvements made on the site also allow us to add very useful features, to be more and more accessible to as many people as possible. For the past four years, the ministry has been conducting an opinion survey of high school students and we are scrutinizing it to measure expectations.
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In 2022, they were very vocal around the issues of stress related to the feeling of waiting to receive an offer of admission. We accelerated the process, and in 2023, three-quarters of high school students had at least one offer after 6 days, compared to two-thirds in 2022. We have significantly shortened the procedure: it was 108 days in 2018, it went to 37 days in 2023.
What's at stake today for Parcoursup?
Parcoursup is now very clearly established in the landscape and we have worked on it by giving it stability: the calendar is identical from one year to the next except for one or two days. We have a temporality that we strive to keep stable because it allows all the educational teams that support students to organize long-term guidance support in proximity, in high schools in particular.
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Each year, the teachers have accumulated experience, which helps them to better respond to high school students. All the actors have assimilated the procedure and the expectations of the candidates.
We conduct a permanent dialogue with higher education courses and high school managers: what matters is that high school students find themselves in the training that suits them, and therefore that we have been able to provide them with clear, transparent and appropriate information.
The National Federation of Non-Contract Private Schools has launched a platform that brings together training courses that are not listed on Parcoursup. What does a presence on Parcoursup guarantee?
What determines the presence of a course on Parcoursup or not is whether the training and the diploma are recognized by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. All courses on Parcoursup have a diploma, recognized by the State, which allows you to consider continuing your studies.
"Public or private, all training courses referenced on Parcoursup are obliged to make commitments"
Jérôme Teillard, Parcoursup project manager at the Ministry of Higher Education
The courses that are not on Parcoursup are courses whose diploma is not recognized by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. Without judging the value of the diploma, with a bachelor's degree X or Y, if you want to go to a master's degree, you will certainly be refused because this training has not been recognized, it is not worth a bachelor's degree and does not allow you to continue your studies in a master's degree. There is only one Parcoursup, it's important to say that.
Public or private, all training courses referenced on Parcoursup are obliged to make commitments to non-discrimination, equal treatment and transparency. This requirement of transparency is a guarantee for users for whom Parcoursup provides very clear visibility on the status of the institution, tuition fees, eligibility for scholarships based on social criteria, on application fees or on the existence of written or oral tests.
On Parcoursup, training courses are forbidden to ask for deposits or to put pressure on candidates by guaranteeing them a place if they agree to give up all their other wishes. Also, a candidate who has finally chosen another course must be reimbursed for his registration fees. For a training course, being or not being in Parcoursup is not exactly the same. This distinction is important, our goal is to help young people and their parents.