The certificate, which certifies the knowledge and skills acquired at the end of secondary school, at the end of the third year, is made up of a part of continuous assessments and final tests. It is graded on a total of 800 points: 400 continuous assessment points and 400 final test points (French, mathematics, history-geography, science and oral). You must earn at least 400 points to obtain it. Passing the certificate, the ancestor of which (the BEPC) was created in 1947, does not condition passage to second grade.
high school entrance exam
But in December, Gabriel Attal, then Minister of Education, announced his desire to reform this exam to strengthen its “demand”, as part of the “knowledge shock” measures. He said he wanted to give a greater share in the final grade to the final exams, which would now represent 60% of the final verdict. Above all, he announced that obtaining the brevet would “condition”, from the 2025 session, “direct access to high school”, with students who do not obtain it having to join a “preparatory-secondary” class.
This “prepa-secondary” class must be tested from the next school year on a voluntary basis in around a hundred high schools, at least one per department. But the generalization of this “prepa-seconde” system, planned for the following year, must still be ratified, just like the reform of the exam itself, planned for the 2025 session.
“Nothing is set in stone”
The texts providing for this reform, which were to be examined during a higher education council (CSE) on July 4, “have been withdrawn,” says Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the main union of middle and high schools. “So we still do not have the architecture of the new certificate.”
