The baccalauréat embodies a history and values that have made it an essential institution in French society. Much has changed since its creation, but it is so deeply rooted in the public imagination that any challenge to it provokes strong reactions.
Yet today, in several respects, it runs counter to the very principles that once made it strong. First, earning it no longer means anything (marks are inflated to match the desired statistics). The way it operates has harmful consequences for teaching. It is no longer a passport to higher education. It costs the state more and more, while the other high-school students lose a month of teaching. Finally, and remarkably, the egalitarian principle that guided its creation has disappeared.
The failure to democratize knowledge ----------------------------------------------
For more than a century and a half, the baccalauréat was the symbol of the democratization of knowledge and the ultimate goal of entire age cohorts, only a minority of whom would be fortunate enough to earn it. It spurred the acquisition of knowledge and carried the torch of equal opportunity: academic success went hand in hand with social success.
But the notion of democratization has been hijacked. Devaluation is not confined to economics. Just as a banknote is worth very little during a period of inflation, the baccalauréat, awarded to 88% or more of high-school students while making ever fewer demands on the abilities it assesses, is no longer a meaningful benchmark. Because the qualification has been devalued, schools have become incapable of rewarding academic merit, which has been cast aside under the damning label of elitism.
How did our baccalauréat come to be worth so little?
It is the perverse result of a misguided view of equality that turns equality into a synonym for levelling down. The famous target of 80% of an age cohort earning the baccalauréat—not quite achieved—has nearly been met by lowering the standard of the papers, manipulating marking schemes and passing candidates wholesale during review-board meetings.
But since that is not enough, the rules for earning the qualification are changed by adding a host of optional subjects that can only contribute points when candidates do well. Thus, in the TPE (supervised personal projects, one of the excellent initiatives introduced in recent years), only points above 10 are counted. A student who copies an entire report from the Internet and is caught receives exactly the same result as one whose work earned a passing mark. Students do, after all, know something about probability, so they can take their chances with little risk.
More seriously still, cheating carries no greater risk. Officially, a student caught red-handed in the baccalauréat faces penalties ranging from a reprimand to a five-year ban on taking an examination. In practice, they face nothing. There is a closed-door meeting with the head of the examination center, after which the student is allowed to sit the remaining papers. Moreover, if an invigilator notices a student cheating, the instructions are not to intervene and to let the student continue.
Under these rules, candidates' scores sometimes go through the roof without meaning very much; it is not unusual to see a student earn the baccalauréat with an overall score above 20. More and more schools report pass rates of 99% or even 100%—and boast about it! While the very notion of ranking students is "taboo" (some software even omits the "ranking" column from the document it produces at the end of each term), principals do everything they can to improve their pass-rate statistics. They are encouraged by newspapers, which publish the same perennial story at the same time each year: their ranking of the best high schools. Since the baccalauréat pass rate no longer means anything—Luc Ferry, a former education minister, even declared that "to miss out on the baccalauréat, you have to apply"—the press now highlights the proportion of candidates awarded the highest distinction.
Social perceptions and teaching --------------------------------
So why persist in keeping it? In some traditional societies, the transition from childhood to adulthood is marked by a "rite of passage": like shedding a skin, a test—often physical and more or less violent—draws a boundary between the two statuses. Once individuals have shed their "child's skin," they suddenly find themselves equal to adults in their rights and responsibilities.
Our societies have an uncomfortable intermediate stage: adolescence. So, for parents and young people alike, is the baccalauréat not becoming a substitute for a rite of passage, as the expression "First, get your baccalauréat!" seems to suggest?
Students' attitude to the examination is paradoxical in more than one respect. On the one hand, it has become such a formality that it no longer means very much, apart from the social rite embodied in the requirement to sit the examination. Many make no effort during the year to master the required knowledge and skills, because they feel so certain of passing.
But for those who nevertheless fail—and for their families—it is often a genuine psychological tragedy, whose severity is proportional to the pass rate among other students.
Unfortunately, the institution's efforts have not focused on giving students a thorough education. In mathematics especially, the system encourages cramming: merely memorizing certain techniques without understanding them. Teachers, increasingly influenced by pressure from administrators or parents, are unfortunately often drawn into this game of superficiality, to the detriment of conveying a genuine understanding of the concepts. Some collaborative websites and textbooks foster the same distortion by giving this approach more "grist for the mill." But can they be blamed for giving in to demagoguery?
In the same vein, we should mention the danger of André Antibi's concept of a "contract of confidence." Antibi is the author of the perceptive Constante macabre, yet in seeking to eliminate the unexpected from examinations, his concept seems to encourage cramming—even if his approach is more nuanced.
A passport to nowhere -------------------------
Another function of the baccalauréat has become obsolete: it was once the key to higher education, guaranteeing a minimum standard. Today, admissions decisions have already been made several months before the results are known.
On the S track, although most French universities have no competitive entrance examination or admission test, applications are selectively reviewed for admission to classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles (post-secondary preparatory classes), IUTs, BTS programs and other specialized courses. Most students submit their applications in early April through the computerized APB system (post-baccalauréat admission; see our article). The system decides in June—therefore before the examination—where they are admitted. Admission is, of course, conditional on earning the baccalauréat, which serves only to validate this a priori selection.
This system also has a harmful consequence for universities: with few exceptions, the students who end up there are those who were not admitted anywhere else. In practice, selection takes place when students progress to the second year. Yet the already very high failure rate in the first year of university is artificially reduced, since funding is calculated from the number of students in the second year. Ultimately, the rising baccalauréat pass rate therefore transfers the cost of repeating a year from high schools to universities.
That brings us to cost. At a time when budget cuts are undermining the coherence of some courses, why not make savings on this unwieldy contraption, when all the evidence shows that it is useless and costs a fortune (see the Cour des comptes report in the box)?
It is tempting to dream that all these resources might be redirected towards teaching!