The college certificate, a diploma that is useless? The Minister of National Education wants to make the transition to high school conditional on obtaining it.
The Minister of National Education wants a start and new momentum to raise the general level of students. While the Pisa 2023 ranking shows that French students have dropped out of mathematics and that learning difficulties are increasing, Gabriel Attal already has several avenues for reform. And certain measures should be introduced very quickly, including one, which promises to be explosive: it will be necessary to obtain the college certificate, the “national patent diploma”, to enter second grade.
The announcement was made in a letter sent by the minister to all National Education staff, consulted by several media this Tuesday morning. “The certificate diploma will condition direct access to high school. Students in difficulty and who do not obtain their certificate will not enter 2nd year the following year, but will join a ‘prepa-high school’ class to consolidate their level “, writes Gabriel Attal in this letter. A small revolution, especially since “the final exams will represent 60% of the final grade, instead of 50% today”.
Other measures that the Ministry of National Education intends to deploy throughout France: repeating a year will be decided by the teaching team, without the family being able to oppose it; level groups should appear for 6th and 5th grade students in particular.