It took courage. To anticipate a “quite drastic” drop in the success rate of the National Diploma of Brevet – DNB – as if the announced failure of tens of thousands of middle school students constituted a political victory, reveals a reversal of values as worrying as it is revealing.
Anticipating a decrease of at least 10 points in the success rate during a recent interview with the Ebra group, the Minister of National Education is not just describing a statistical evolution: he is endorsing, and worse, claiming a regression.
Since when does a worthy educational system settle for doing less well? Since when does a minister consider reducing the number of successful candidates and honors as an objective in itself? Behind this communication emerges a brutal vision of the school: a school that sorts more than it emancipates, that punishes more than it supports.
Because after all, what are we talking about? 14 or 15-year-old students, some of whom have already been weakened by years marked by successive crises – health, social, psychological. Students whose widening learning inequalities, deteriorating school climate, and shaky mental health are known.
The figures are eloquent and reflect a true social separatism: 97% of students from privileged backgrounds obtain their DNB when barely 80% of students from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed. In other words, the poorest students fail two to three times more often than their more privileged peers.
And in response to this, what is there? A form of ministerial satisfaction in anticipation of their likely failure.
The minister invokes the need to “prepare for an exam” and calls for the systematic introduction of a week of revisions. But this announcement rings hollow. It’s as if a week is enough to make up for years of underinvestment, overcrowded classrooms, and a glaring lack of educational staff. As if success or failure relied solely on the responsibility of students, who are told to “become aware” while the institution weakens.
This discourse is not only clumsy: it is dangerous. It instills the idea that failure would be a necessary step to “raise the standard,” as if difficulties should be artificially increased to be credible. However, an exam only has value if it measures real achievements in a fair context, not if it becomes a tool for political communication.
Instead of rejoicing in an anticipated decline, the minister should reflect on its root causes. Why do students from disadvantaged backgrounds perform less well? What additional resources have been given to schools to support the most vulnerable? What policy to reduce educational inequalities is actually being implemented? On these crucial questions, ministerial silence is deafening.
Making a decrease in the success rate a marker of demand is a convenient illusion. The real demand is to give every student the means to succeed. Not to prepare to explain why they fail more.
Otherwise, it’s not only the Brevet results that will fall. It’s the confidence in public schools, already mistreated, that will continue to erode.
Yannick TRIGANCE
National Secretary PS Education
Regional Counselor Ile-de-France
