Gabriel Attal announced the addition of a mathematics test to the baccalaureate this Tuesday, December 5, 2023. A measure which should make it possible to raise the level of French students, which is clearly declining according to the Pisa ranking.
More change for the baccalaureate. The Minister of National Education wishes to add a new test to the exam from the start of the 2025-206 school year: an anticipated test “dedicated to mathematics and scientific culture”, specifies Gabriel Attal. The minister announced this project in an email addressed to teachers on Tuesday, December 5, before speaking and announcing a series of measures intended to “raise the level” of students in mathematics, and more generally that of “our school “.
This new mathematics test must, according to the minister’s plans, be added to the anticipated tests that first grade students take each year during the month of June. Thanks to this new exam, all students without exception will take at least one mathematics test, regardless of the specialty courses chosen in first and final year. Mathematics which has returned to the common core of the first year program will thus be evaluated in the same way as mastery of French.
The addition of a mathematics test to the baccalaureate and Gabriel Attal’s other announcements about the school made on December 5, 2023 must be a response, and above all a solution, to the proven decline in the level of French students. The Pisa ranking, published every three years and unveiled this December 5 by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is severe and notes an unprecedented fall in the general level since the creation of the ranking. In mathematics the average drops by 15 points and in France the level of students drops by 21 points. With a score of 474 points in the Pisa ranking for mathematics, France is placed just above the average (472 points) and at 26th place in more than 70 countries evaluated.