how does the BAC work?

[SaligoBay]

Could somone explain how the system works, please? A neighbour tried to tell me it's a simple system, but I could feel my grey cells tying themselves in knots after a few minutes talk of options and resitting this-but-not-that and redoubling and quotients and averages and coefficients.

Is it graded, do you get a Bac A, a Bac B etc? Can you get the Bac if you're brilliant at French and German but only get 3 out of 20 for Maths? How many subjects do you have to sit exams in to get a Bac?

And so on. Thank you,
SaligoBay

[Val_2]

SB. It is really complicated to those of us not used to the system from an early age here or having gone through it ourselves or having other kids already done it. Basically as far as my daughter has tried to explain you score a number of points and the more over 400 the better. In our case, more points were scored in the spanish exam than the english which is obviously my girl's best subject so there is no rhyme or reason in some cases. There are different BACs obviously and I don't remember much about different grades, only AB mentioned if you do really well. As for the subjects,that depends on the type of BAC you are doing,but at least a minimum of 7 or 8 different subjects are required. That coefficient thingy is complicated too and is used to calculate the number of points. Maybe Miki can explain it better than me,but at the end of the day I am so glad it is over although we have now gone from the frying pan into the fire with the next stage and the difficulties of finding lodgings and getting the paperwork sorted. I was so p*ss** of today after three weeks of continual ringing the next Lyce about their boarding facilities and being told to ring back cos of discussions they are having about it,that they have now turned round and told us there are none available for our particular study course and never has been. Grrrr!!!!!

[Teamedup]

Very very simply the BAC is in about 12-14 subjects usually. Each subject has a certain amount of marks that can be obtained from it. So unfortunately if someone is really good at some of the low mark subjects and lousy at the high mark ones, they need not necessarily get their BAC.

The BAC's have different letters after them indicating as to whether it is some sort of a literary BAC or Scientific.
There isn't a BAC A or B etc etc in the sense that these are grades indicating how well one has done, however, when someone gets their BAC if they have done well there will be something like 'with mention' on it, there are several of these phrases indicating if it is a pass or merit etc etc.

If someone misses out by just a few marks then they can go and try and make them up during the summer, I know some kids who have managed this and others who haven't.

Sadly it is an all or nothing system. Any parts of it that you pass have no value alone. You can't say, I passed my BAC in spannish and maths, but didn't get a full BAC. If you don't pass you have nowt, and it is the same with the Brevet and all other exams I can think of too.


Simple? not a word I would associate with it or any exam here really.

[Janeandalain]

Having read Miki's posting, I'd just add that the whole coefficient thing changes according to which baccalaureat you do. Obviously if you are doing S(cientifique)then science and maths count for a whole lot more than if you do L. If you do L(itteraire), I think I am right in saying that maths is done in premiere as an epreuve anticipee like French. Miki's coefficent look to me like they are for ES, because the economics seems to feature.

If university is envisaged, there are three bacs worth having, S - scientific, ES -economic, and L - literature (although snobby French parents might try to tell you that the only one worth having is S). These are all done in the standard lycee, along with STT, which is a tertiary bac which is not well seen. Otherwise there are professional bac, some of which are wonderful, some of which aren't. It is incredilbly different to the English system and takes some getting used to!