CONTINUOUS MONITORING. A “reform of the reform” of the baccalaureate turns upside down the continuous assessment for the 2022 session of the baccalaureate. General principle, “common core” subjects, new features for 2022, coefficients, calculation of grades… What you need to know about continuous assessment.
[Mis à jour le 10 mai 2022 à 22h32] This is one of the major novelties of the 2022 baccalaureate, after the postponement of the full and effective implementation of the baccalaureate reform due to the health crisis: the continuous assessment, planned for a long time, comes into full effect this year. . After the “common assessments of continuous assessment” (or E3C), then the “common assessments” (EC), the calculation of a large part of the mark of the baccalaureate candidates (30%) will be done over two years or so, over the first and final years, all without a dedicated test. The continuous assessment is supposed to evaluate the disciplines of the common core in high school.
The total continuous control nevertheless takes up the spirit and the content of the E3C that the ministry initially wanted to establish with its reform of the baccalaureate. Starting with the subjects themselves: the continuous assessment will make it possible to evaluate each candidate for the baccalaureate in history-geography, compulsory modern languages (two in number), in PE, in general scientific education or in mathematics. technologically advanced. A total of 5 subjects which count for coefficient 6 each over the two years of première and terminale (3 in première and 3 in terminale) and thus represent 30% of the mark of the baccalaureate. To obtain the total share of continuous control, which accounts for 40% of the baccalaureate resultone must also add one of the three specialty courses that pupils drop out of in première (coeff. 8 in première) and moral and civic education (coeff. 2).
What is the continuous control for the tank?
If the final exams of the baccalaureate always take place in June, they are limited, since the baccalaureate reform, a philosophy test and a major oral exam for seniors, as well as the French baccalaureate test for first year students. Previously, in March (May for the 2022 baccalaureate due to the Covid crisis), specialty tests were also taken. The rest – a core common to all candidates or almost – is evaluated according to the continuous assessment and over the last two years of high school, that is to say the first and the terminal. The baccalaureate therefore now begins in the first year.
Continuous monitoring thus corresponds to 40% of the baccalaureate mark against 60% for the tests. For the government, the objective of continuous monitoring is to “promote the regularity of work and the progress of students” throughout the first and final year and to simplify the course and “to give high school students the means to project themselves to success in higher education.
What materials are covered by continuous monitoring?
First and final year students are therefore assessed on a total of 5 subjects, accounting for 30% of the final baccalaureate mark. These 5 subjects depend in particular on the type of baccalaureate (general or technological) as well as the modern languages chosen by the candidate. Here is the list of materials:
- history geography
- modern languages A and B (2 subjects)
- physical education and sports (EPS)
- general science education
- technologically advanced mathematics
To arrive at the 40% of continuous control at the baccalaureate, it is necessary to add to these subjects thespecialty education abandoned in first and themoral and civic education first and final.
What’s new in continuous monitoring in 2022?
If originally the 40% of continuous control was established via the “E3C”, for “common evaluations of continuous control”, these evaluations were relaxed following several proposals from the committee for monitoring the reform of the baccalaureate. Absolute continuous control is now privileged as well as the autonomy of the heads of establishments to make the system “more flexible, supporting learning and conducted within the framework of the class”, specified the ministry in a statement dated June 2021. The “adjustment proposals” put forward by the ministry only concern this part of the exam, the final written and oral tests have been maintained.
The baccalaureate reform gave rise to an unprecedented form of grading with 60% final exams and 40% continuous assessment. This last part was itself initially split in two for the 2021 session of the baccalaureate: the marks of the school reports counting for 10% and the results of the “common continuous assessment tests”, supposed to evaluate the progress of the candidates and disseminated in first and terminal, for 30%. But for the baccalaureate 2022 and the following ones, these E3C events are removed and the continuous assessment is based solely on the “sole general average resulting from the annual averages of the school report cards of the final cycle”.
What are the coefficients for the common core subjects?
Any deletion induces a compensation. And as part of the second reform of the baccalaureate, the Ministry of Education has decided to assign coefficients to each subject of the common core to replace the marks normally provided by the intermediate tests. The ministry has credited modern languages A and B, history-geography, physical and sports education and science education for the general route or mathematics for the technological route of a factor 6, i.e. a coeff. 3 in first and 3 in terminal.
Specialty education followed only for one year responds to a factor 8, half as much as for the specialties studied during the last two years of high school and assessed by an exam this time. Finally, moral and civic education is credited with a lower coefficient, the ministry has opted for a factor 2, i.e. a coeff. 1 in première and 1 in terminale.
As the E3Cs and ECs approached more tests, the continuous assessment marks are calculated from the average of the quarterly or half-yearly averages of the pupil. All semesters of first and final count. For the EPS, the rating goes through “certifying evaluations” provided for in the framework of the control during training (CCF).
Averages are established quarterly or semesterly by the teachers and “approved by the class council” then “are sent to families in the quarterly or half-yearly bulletins, then entered in the school report”, specifies Eduscol who adds that they are designated by the term “annual quantified evaluations”. In each subject, the annual average is validated during the last class council at the end of first and at the end of terminale. The annual average is rounded, in each subject, to the upper tenth of a point.
For the 2022 session, first year students fully enter the new system. Candidates for the final baccalaureate were able to keep the marks they obtained in first class during the year 2020-2021.
Does continuous monitoring take options into account?
The taking into account of the options was restrained in the first version of the reform of the baccalaureate. With the latest developments, the possibilities are extended with the possibility of adding options to the additional coefficient of 4 if they are taken in première and terminale or factor 2 if they are chosen only in terminale. Up to 4 options can be presented at the baccalaureate, including 3 with a coefficient of 4. The objective: not to exceed a total of coefficients of 14.
A candidate who would have added two options to the coefficient 4 and another to the coefficient 2 will thus be marked on a total coefficient of 110 instead of 100. If an option is added to the calculation, the principle of quarterly or half-yearly averages is again applied on one or two years. But beware, in the new version of the tray, there are no more “bonuses” thanks to the options: the marks are fully taken into account, and not only the points above 10 as was the case before the reform. In the event of a bad mark in the option, the overall mark in the baccalaureate will be impacted.
Unions not convinced by the reform
If the Minister of Education defends, since the reform of the baccalaureate in 2018, his project and now presents continuous assessment as the means to better support the learning and progress of students, several critics have accompanied these changes. Sophie Vénétitay, secretary general of the first secondary school union, the Snes-FSU, fears that taking into account general averages only will exacerbate inequalities between high schools. “These last two years (…) have clearly demonstrated that this type of assessment increases inequalities between students and between establishments”, she pointed out to France InfoJune 29, 2021.
Other unions are more virulent with regard to the modifications, Jean-Rémi Girard, the president of the National union of high schools, colleges, schools and higher (Snalc) alerted on this “very, very bad idea” which will “kill definitely the bin” and “eventually create local bins”. He explains about the same media : “The concept of a national exam is to try to put all the students on the same line to see what is happening, to see what they know, to see what they have mastered, whatever their social origin or geographical place of study, etc. The more we strengthen the bulletin, the less we do this”.