Louise Sallé / Photo credit: AFP 7:10 a.m., March 25, 2024

Gabriel Attal wants to put an end to academic corrections: this is a measure included in the “shock of knowledge” and therefore announced last December. For more transparency, and in order to raise the requirement for the certificate and the baccalaureate, the Prime Minister wants to eliminate the artificial inflation of grades from this year. 

This practice is common in certain rectorates, in particular at the patent level. To smooth out the results at the national level and not stigmatize the areas where students are least successful, the success rate is sometimes raised. This is information published in the daily

Le Figaro

on March 21. 

A difference of five points in the Versailles academy in the patent

According to figures revealed by the newspaper 

Le Figaro

, the Versailles academy, for example, inflates its patent success rate by five points. In 2023, this rate increases from 85% to 90%, after adjustment of the grades by the rectorate. “Out of 36 copies that I corrected, I had 11 students who had not even written a single word in the constructed development,” testifies Joseph Vergnaud, teacher of history and geography at the Versailles academy and patent copy corrector last year. 

“In my lot of corrected copies, it’s obvious that there are some who got the certificate, or even who were able to get it with honors… Many will really have big difficulties in second grade,” he laments .

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“In Créteil it is particularly marked”, testifies a teacher

In the Créteil academy, results increase by around six points in the brevet. A culture of “over-marking” which continues until the final year… “When we correct the baccalaureate exams, we will value a keyword, even if the answer is wrong!”, confides anonymously a professor of economy in Seine-Saint-Denis. “There is a feeling of injustice, of not valuing our work and also the work of the students,” she regrets.

“For the assessment of continuous assessment, we may be summoned to ask us to raise the grades,” adds the teacher. “One thing is certain, it is that in Créteil it is particularly marked… Because we have a level which is increasingly weak but no one says its name.” For her, school has become a machine for “taking students to the next level” and no longer for “making them succeed”.