Bac 2022: how are the first tests going?

Europe 1 with AFP 11:19 a.m., May 09, 2022, modified at 11:21 a.m., May 09, 2022

Let's go for the 2022 baccalaureate, with written specialty tests which are being held for the first time this week, Covid obliges.

Postponed from March to May due to the epidemic, they are not taken into account in Parcoursup.

In 2020, high school students in Terminale had obtained - or not - their baccalaureate on the basis of their grades in continuous assessment.

Because of the pandemic, the tests which often bring together hundreds of young people in high schools had been canceled by the Ministry of Education.

A return to normal? 

Last year, continuous assessment accounted for at least 82% of the final exam mark.

Philosophy had been the only written test of that session (along with French for first year students).

Beginning of a return to normality in 2022. But not quite since the specialty tests, born of the baccalaureate reform decided by Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and therefore never yet organized, have been postponed for two months.

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The schooling disrupted by the health crisis and the load of programs for these specialties - the two "major" subjects chosen by each high school student in Terminale - raised fears that the students were not ready to take the written tests in March.

The adopted calendar also means that the marks of the specialty tests are not taken into account in Parcoursup, the platform for admission to higher education, and therefore in the files examined by the establishments to which future graduates have applied.

A big impact on student motivation

Instead, the files will indicate the averages of specialties over the three terms of Première and the first two of Terminale.

Clarisse, 18, at Racine high school in Paris, says she is "a little annoyed" by this postponement.

And "the fact that it does not count in Parcoursup has an impact on the motivation of many", she notes.

For these written tests, which take place from Wednesday to Friday depending on the subjects, the subjects have also been adjusted: the candidates will have a greater choice of questions or exercises.

The program remains the one that was planned for March.

Monday May 9 and Tuesday May 10 are devoted to the revision of the specialty program in high schools.

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"At first, I was really disappointed" that these tests were not taken into account in Parcoursup, says Dilara, 17, a high school student in Clermont-Ferrand, who revises for Maths and Physics-chemistry.

"We said to ourselves that it was a bit of our chance to catch up and get better grades in the baccalaureate".

"But I also tell myself that it may allow me to have a better grade than if I had passed them in February," she adds.

And despite a lower stake, she admits: “We are all a little stressed, especially since it has been two years since the baccalaureate has not taken place, and that in addition it is the new baccalaureate”.

Because if the marks of these written tests will not fit in Parcoursup, it is also, quite simply, to have the baccalaureate, sesame for higher studies.

Decisive tests for the final result

However, these specialty tests have a high coefficient in the final mark of the baccalaureate.

Among them: Arts, History-Geography, Geopolitics and Political Science, Humanities, Literature and Philosophy, Mathematics, Digital and Computer Science, Physics-Chemistry and Economics and Social Sciences.

Since the baccalaureate reform in 2019, the baccalaureate mark is based 40% on continuous assessment and 60% on final tests (written and oral French, passed in Première class, philosophy, specialty tests and grand oral, passed in Terminale).

The first tests called at the time "E3C" (for common continuous assessment tests) had taken place as part of the new baccalaureate in February 2020, just before the first confinement at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But they had resulted in the blocking of dozens of establishments in France and overseas, and in the postponement of tests in dozens of establishments.