Philosophy once again kicks off the written tests for the baccalauréat: more than 540,000 secondary school students will be sitting their essays and text commentaries from 8am on Tuesday 18 June, although many will have focused their revision on the specialised tests scheduled for the end of the week

The timetable for the 2024 baccalauréat continues. Terminale students in the general and technological streams (392,145 for the general bac and 151,224 for the technological bac) will start at 8am with one of the three philosophy subjects (two essays and a text commentary) offered as part of the new bac introduced in 2019.

“The only written test will remain in June”

The bac mark is based 40% on continuous assessment and 60% on the final exams (written and oral French in première, speciality exams, philosophy and the grand oral in terminale). Philosophy, with a coefficient of eight for the general bac and four for the technological bac (out of a total of 100), remains a key test.

This session of the 2024 bac, marked by the mobilisation of some young people against the extreme right following the rise of the Rassemblement National in the European elections, has seen the speciality tests moved from March to June.

These tests (two major subjects chosen by each pupil and accounting for a third of the results) were held in March last year, leading to absenteeism and demotivation among some pupils in the final term.

“This year, philosophy is no longer the only written test in June. The 2024 session is more normal, more like the bac before the reform,” observes Hélène Péquignat, a philosophy teacher in Voiron (Isère).

“Gaining points”

The problem, according to the teacher, is that “revision for the specialities and the big oral disrupt the preparation for philosophy”.

After philosophy, the students will sit the speciality written exams from Wednesday to Friday, followed by the oral exam between 24 June and 3 July.

The results of the bac, which is a prerequisite for higher education, will be published on 8 July. Many high school students have already decided on their course of study for next year, with Parcoursup having published its results on 30 May.

For this year’s bac, the youngest candidate, registered as an independent candidate in Strasbourg, is nine years old, an unprecedented precocity in the records of the Ministry of Education. The oldest candidate was 76.

For the bac pro, the 184,795 final-year students began the general written tests last Tuesday with languages, before French and history-geography this week. Since 2012, the pass rate for the baccalauréat has exceeded 80%. Last year, it was 90.9%, down slightly by 0.2 points on the previous year.