It's now been a month since we've had class, it's becoming very worrying.
At the beginning of November, a high school student met in front of a blocked high school in Aubervilliers (Seine-Saint-Denis) was worried about her future. “Our notebooks aren't even filled, so we can't revise much,” explained this teenager, who hadn't had class for five weeks. At the height of the mobilization, at the beginning of October, up to 891 establishments were affected by a total or partial suspension of courses.
Despite these disruptions, the government does not plan to postpone the date of the 2027 baccalaureate exams. “I will be very clear: I do not intend to touch the exams,” declared Saturday, November 7, the Minister of Education to Le Parisien. "We don't change the baccalaureate. It's a principle. The baccalaureate is the baccalaureate", insisted Monday morning Edouard Geffray at the microphone of "4V" on France 2.
The first tests are scheduled for May 24 for the professional sector, and June 14 for the general and technological baccalaureate. But, in the most heavily mobilized establishments this fall, the delay in learning the programs will be difficult to make up for and this situation can generate stress among students and their teachers. For Lætitia Aresu, CFDT Education general secretary, making up for lost lesson hours will be “an additional mental load which will weigh on teachers”. “It makes them responsible for passing the baccalaureate when it is not them who control events,” she says.
A delay in the exam too complicated to organize
The unions interviewed by franceinfo, however, agree on the idea of preserving the dates of the tests. “If we wanted to save a little time, that is to say at least two weeks, we would have to postpone the written tests to the end of June, then the orals to the beginning of July,” says Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU. “We don't really see how it could be organized,” adds Lætitia Aresu, recalling that the schedule of the tests was decided in September, after consultation with union organizations, high school students and students.
Such a change in the calendar would disrupt the school year on several levels. According to the general secretary of Snes-FSU, this would pose difficulties for “the organization of the teaching service” during exam days. In fact, staff would have to be mobilized for later dates. This would also shift the admission procedures to higher education establishments, conditional on obtaining the baccalaureate.
“For example, students who have not had an assignment on Parcoursup will have to wait longer to find out if places become available.”
Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU
at franceinfo
Finally, a postponement would make the organization of the start of the school year more difficult, because establishments would be informed late of the number of repeaters "and this can affect the number of classes and students per class in final year", concludes Sophie Vénétitay.
“Success courses” during the “little vacation”
No postponement, therefore. But in order not to leave students by the wayside, the Minister of National Education is proposing to set up “success courses” during “short holidays, for example in February or Easter”. Concretely, "volunteer teachers" would come and provide hours of "complementary or additional, catch-up or training, lessons for students". These would be paid, specifies Edouard Geffray.
Lætitia Aresu fears that this measure is not realistic. “We can clearly see that there is a problem with replacing absent teachers. When will teachers have extra time to catch up on lessons?” asks the CFDT Education general secretary. A Snes-FSU survey suggests that, at the start of the 2026 school year, the teaching team was incomplete in 69% of high schools.
The measure does not convince the principals either. “With what means do we do this? And with what personnel?” warns Bruno Bobkiewicz, the general secretary of the management staff union SNPDEN-Unsa.
Unions in favor of adjusting the tests
“Edouard Geffray’s response misses the point,” laments Sophie Vénétitay. For her, the central question lies in the content of the tests. Like CFDT Education, it considers that an adjustment of the baccalaureate exams would be fairer for all students.
Among the options proposed: reducing the number of texts to be studied for oral French – for first year students –, currently numbering 16 in the general sector and 12 for the technological sector. For the written tests in final year, Sophie Vénétitay would like more subjects to be offered to candidates. With this solution, instead of having the choice between two subjects, they could choose from four, "that way, we cover the whole year and even if there were a few gaps, the students are not trapped", she explains. Contacted by franceinfo about these proposals from unions, the Ministry of National Education responded that “it is not possible, for the moment, to respond”.
For Bruno Bobkiewicz, representative of establishment management, there is no hurry. “It is urgent not to decide anything until we have measured the seriousness and scale of the problem,” he says. To avoid adding fuel to the fire with measures that divide teachers and students, he suggests waiting to hear back from teachers after the Christmas holidays, in order to better assess the academic delay accumulated by high school students.
