The suspicions and accusations of discrimination against students at a Parisian Jewish high school during the 2024 baccalaureate exam have not been confirmed by the administrative investigation launched by Minister Nicole Belloubet, the Ministry of Education said on Thursday evening.
The evidence collected “does not allow us to conclude that the students of the Yabné high school suffered any discrimination on the grounds of their supposed religion or their original establishment”, indicate the results of the investigation.
“While some students may have received lower marks in this very specific Grand Oral test than in other written tests in the same subjects, there is no evidence that these marks awarded by a sovereign jury were for reasons other than the mastery or lack of mastery of this exercise by these students,” he adds. The examination procedures were “compliant,” the investigation asserts. Nicole Belloubet had requested the opening of such an investigation, “following reports concerning around fifteen students from the Yabné private school group under contract in Paris,” the ministry recalls.
“No distortion of rating”
On “the two incriminated juries”, for the first, “the analysis of the results of the candidates graded by this jury, by comparing the students from Yabné and the other students, does not reveal any distortion of grading”. And for the second, if it “was generally more severe, there is nothing to suggest any real or supposed discrimination against the students from the high school” Yabné, she adds.
Overall, “173 candidates took the oral exam in physics and chemistry” in the examination center located in the 18th arrondissement of Paris and “the distribution of marks does not show any major distortion for the students of the Yabné high school”, according to the conclusions of the survey.
Lawyer Patrick Klugman had stated on the social network X that the Yabné high school had “observed a bias in the grading of 15 of its students who took the oral exam for the baccalaureate specialty in front of two juries from the same examination center in Paris.” “We are talking about a difference of 9 points out of 20 on average compared to the 123 other candidates from the high school who took the exam in front of other juries. This difference, which cannot be explained either statistically or pedagogically, gives rise to suspicions of discrimination,” he continued.
“There are notes that challenge”
In a press release, the Yabné high school assured that one of its “teachers present on the day of the exams at the examination establishment informed the management of the high school of a discussion in the teachers’ room stigmatizing Yabné as a ‘school outside the contract'”. The high school “was also alerted by parents of a particularly aggressive attitude of the jury during their child’s passage”. The establishment requested “that the discriminatory marks be removed so as not to harm the students”.
Contacted by AFP on Thursday, the president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Yonathan Arfi, said he was “prudent by nature” but “there is a lot of emotion and notes that are troubling”. Several elected officials have called on the Minister of Education to obtain clarification on the facts and to denounce, if they were to be proven, an “extremely serious” situation. “I dare not believe that examiners from Paris 18 engaged in such discrimination. An investigation is indeed necessary very quickly”, declared Renaissance MP Caroline Yadan. “If the facts and the anti-Semitism are proven, it is extremely serious. If it is a rumour, it must be put to an end”, wrote PS senator Laurence Rossignol on X.