The Minister of Education decided in March (memo dated 26) that no jury points could no longer be awarded to baccalaureate candidates obtaining an average lower than 8/20. At the end of May, he added that instructions would be given to the correctors of the written tests so that spelling, syntax and grammar errors would be more severely punished.
We may ask, have the public authorities finally undertaken to raise the level of this entrance exam into higher education? Because finally, a few figures are enough to account for the absurdity of the present situation. Regarding the general baccalaureate, 96.4% of candidates were admitted to the 2025 session (Ministry of Education, Information Note No. 24.29, July 2025) when the average admission rate for ten years is 93.7%.
The level of requirements sacrificed
At the same time, the university failure rate is more than worrying. If we consider, all sectors combined, the cohort of students registered in L1 in 2020, only 30% of them obtained a License (L3) in 2023 (Ministry of Higher Education and Research, Sies, Flash Note No. 30, November 2024). Hence, of course, a question. What is the purpose of this exam which has lost a large part of its certifying value, has its cost estimated by the National Education Management Staff Union in March 2026 at 1.5 billion euros, and reduces the schooling time of high school students by three weeks?
Everyone knows that the function of the baccalaureate is plural. If it opens access to higher education, it symbolizes the democratic spirit of the educational policies carried out in France since the end of the sixties, pursuing studies having become a kind of right. This is where the problem lies.
Considering the failure of socially disadvantaged students to be unjust, we have continued to implement reforms which have sacrificed the level of requirements required to access higher education and which, far from ensuring equality of opportunity, have enabled the implementation of what must be called a process of “segregative democratization”.
Here again, the facts speak for themselves. Thus, 50% of teachers’ children, as Marie Duru-Bellat and François Dubet explain in Can School Save Democracy? (2020), follow specialized scientific courses compared to barely 20% among the children of unskilled workers. The latter constitute 53% of the workforce in technological series compared to 14% for teachers’ children. One thing thus appears clearly. It is not the fact of having a bachelor’s degree that makes the difference, but rather the precise nature of the baccalaureate obtained and the specialty courses followed.
Feeling of social downgrading
If we add to this the feeling of social downgrading experienced by the increasingly large number of students who, having been unable to access a major school, struggle to obtain a managerial job even though they hold a master’s degree, we must recognize that democratization policies have not succeeded in curbing the social hierarchy reflected, for another example, in the fact that 21% of teachers’ children access a major school compared to less than 1% at the children of workers.
In this deleterious context, let us therefore be consistent! How can we defend the value of an exam intended to make a selection if we consider a priori that the failure of the least advantaged students constitutes an intolerable injustice? Isn’t there a contradiction that it would be time to accept?
Because one of two things. Either we believe that academic merit is something other than the advantage conferred by a privileged social position. In this case, selection on merit being the least unfair of selections, the baccalaureate must regain its certifying value and be granted only to candidates able to enter successful university courses. However, the facts, as we have pointed out, are cruel, as the failure rate in the first university cycle is massive.
If the reasons are complex, one of them is nevertheless clear. Convinced that the democratic principle implies the success of all, we grant the greatest number of people the right to access higher education, including those who do not possess the qualities required to succeed. Now, here we have to be honest. If we really think that the idea of merit only disguises relationships of economic and cultural domination, then let’s be consistent! Let’s eliminate this exam or, at the very least, replace the final exams with the organization of generalized continuous assessment.
Some fear that removing these tests will undermine the value of the exam. Let’s be serious! What could possibly be the value of the baccalaureate which has lost all selectivity and no longer certifies the ability to follow a path to success in higher education? What’s the point, then, in shouting and feigning horror at the end of an exam that we sacrificed on the altar of a democratist ideology that reinforced the inequalities it set out to combat?
Return the certificate to its certificate value
Let’s be pragmatic. Why spend more than a billion and a half euros to organize an exam that all candidates must pass? Not to mention that it is always possible to fail a test. Evaluating candidates on all the results obtained during the year would therefore be fairer. The icing on the cake: in an era that despairs of the decline of teachers’ authority, the definition of the exam grade through continuous assessment can only rehabilitate the authority of teachers in their classes.
Some people will put forward two arguments. The first consists of invoking the virtues of the anonymity of the evaluation. Either. But is it enough for an evaluation to be anonymous for it to be fair? The second argument is that of the “two-speed” ferry. There would be the diploma obtained in this or that city center high school and the one obtained in the suburbs. But where is the problem?
The selective sectors recruit based on applications, which are finalized at the end of March. The removal of the final exam would have no effect on this recruitment. As for university courses, who doesn’t know that they are accessible to any baccalaureate by right? Here again, the elimination of final exams would in no way disadvantage students educated in establishments in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Because in the name of social justice we have disqualified merit, the baccalaureate is no longer selective at all. A choice is therefore necessary. If we want to restore to the baccalaureate the certifying value that it has lost, we must raise the level of requirements relating to this exam. If we consider that in the name of justice everyone must have the right to pass the baccalaureate, what is the point of perpetuating what is already nothing more than a simulacrum?
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