LThe reform of general high school is five years old. It replaced the organization of high school in series with a “choice” system which imposes a common core to which are added three specialties to choose from among thirteen in 1rereduced to two in the final year. The reform has led to a massive drop in access to scientific courses, particularly significant for girls. It is accompanied by a loss of versatility which reduces the possibilities of higher education.
Despite repeated warnings on the harmful consequences of this organization, no systemic correction has been proposed. The deficit in scientific training therefore persists in high school while the needs are increasing, particularly in professions requiring a high level of scientific and technological skills.
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Studying the effect of the massive reduction in access to science in high school on higher education becomes crucial to assess the country’s ability to meet current social, environmental, technological and economic challenges.
Published indicators for the engineering cycles at the start of the 2023 academic year correspond precisely to the arrival of the first graduates of the reformed baccalaureate. They show a decline of 11.5% in the number of new registrants, returning to the 2016 level of 42,239 students, compared to 47,745 in 2022. This sharp decline breaks with a steady increase for decades, even though the number of places has increased. It predicts a weakening of the level of candidates and a decline in future graduates in 2026, in contradiction with the growing needs of companies and the government’s announced objective in its plan for green energy in 2023.
The scale of this drop makes an analysis of the main possible causes essential. Between 2020 and 2023, three upheavals can be identified: the reform of high schools, which led to a drop in the number of science baccalaureate holders graduating from 2021; the transformation of DUTs into BUTs, which concerns 2021 baccalaureate holders for the first time; and the health crisis from March 2020 to July 2021.
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The Covid-19 pandemic was global: its negative repercussions should also have been visible in foreign recruitment. However, these are increasing sharply. Furthermore, since the first lockdown disrupted the 2020 baccalaureate, a clear decline would have been observed from 2022; if a slight decline in new registrations in the engineering cycle appears in 2022, it is eleven times less significant than in 2023. The health crisis therefore does not seem to have contributed significantly to this reversal of the situation.
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