It is the path of caution that will have prevailed. Fifteen days after an unprecedented mobilization mixing teachers and parents of students in the same denunciation of the management of the health crisis at school, the Minister of Education announced, Friday, January 28, a postponement of the so-called "specialty" tests. of the baccalaureate.
Initially scheduled for March 14 to 16, these writings, which are worth a third of the final grade for the reformed exam, will take place from May 11 to 13. Two months gained to “prepare calmly ” and “preserve equal treatment” between the candidates, after another sawtooth year due to the Covid-19, we defend Rue de Grenelle, where the it was reported, this same Friday, of more than 500,000 students declared positive for the coronavirus over the last seven days and 21,000 classes closed.
At the end of a meeting with the various stakeholders, the Minister of Education, beaten in recent weeks for his repeated communication errors, played the card of appeasement: "We thought a lot, we listened a lot , he put forward, with the interest of the students as a compass. »
It's not just the calendar that's been relaxed; the preparation of the tests is too. On “D-Day”, baccalaureate candidates will be offered a wider choice of questions or exercises. They will compose on the initial programs - in other words, those supposed to be completed in March -, and will be able to devote themselves to the revisions the two days preceding their convocation.
For high school students in the vocational track, the change is less: if the future internship periods are reduced by two weeks, their tests retain the same format and the same program. 1st students see the number of texts to be presented orally reduced to 16 in the general route, against 20 so far, and to 9 in the technological route, instead of 12.
“We have finally managed to save time for our students”, rejoices Sophie Vénétitay, of the SNES-FSU, the majority union in secondary education.
Developments to be credited to the teaching movement? In the circles of teachers, where the “postponement” of the tests had been made one of the watchwords of the three days of mobilization on January 13, 20 and 27, relief was in order on Friday. “We have finally managed to save time for our students ,” rejoices Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of SNES-FSU, the majority union in secondary education. “It's the least bad of the solutions” , reacts in the same vein Catherine Nave-Bekhti, secretary general of the SGEN-CFDT. "We are satisfied with announcements that reduce the pressure on students and colleagues" , explains Sébastien Vieille, from Snalc. A state of mind shared by the parents of the FCPE, which accommodates an " equal preparation essential for students, who have once again spent a difficult year with educational discontinuity ". All also welcome announcements made "to education professionals first" - and not through the press, as was the case for the " Ibiza protocol " , on the eve of the start of the school year in January.
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