France's 530,000 first‑year students sit for the French baccalaureate exam

Around 385,000 students in the general stream and 145,000 in the technological stream (about 530,000 in total) took the anticipatory French baccalaureate exam on Thursday morning, June 11, from 8 a.m. to noon. The four‑hour written test, weighted with a coefficient of 5, required candidates to produce either a dissertation or a text‑commentary in the general track, and a commentary or a text‑contraction with an essay in the technological track.

Texts from the official syllabus were used, including works by Louise d’Épinay, Arthur Rimbaud, Francis Ponge, Hélène Dorion, Émile Augier and Étienne de La Boétie, among others. Education minister Édouard Geffray reiterated that markers must be stricter on language mastery, stating, “If a student has manifestly insufficient spelling, syntax and grammar, they cannot obtain the average.” He added, “There will be no barème if I can say fault by fault… we do not reason in mechanical points.”

Students will sit the anticipatory mathematics exam the following day, also with a reduced coefficient.