Page 6 - BACC Report

Draft Report on European Baccalaureate 2020
The decisions of the Board of Governors can be found published on the website of the Office
of the Secretary-General of the European Schools: https://www.eursc.eu/en/Office/official-
texts/decisions.

The modalities of the session are therefore included in the document 2020-04-D-20 -
Derogation to the General Rules and to the Arrangements for Implementing the Regulations
for the European Baccalaureate (Applicable for the Year 2020 European Baccalaureate
session) – Linked to COVID-19 circumstances,

Concerning the moderation process, the Office of the Secretary General has requested an
external expert to analyze the data, quantify the difference in the distribution of final marks
and eventually propose moderation methods to be applied on the results of the 2020 session,
if necessary (“whenever the difference in the distribution of final marks in comparison to
previous years is statistically relevant”).

This expertise was based on the European Baccalaureate results of the last five European
Baccalaureate sessions (2015-2019).

An extraordinary meeting of the Board of Inspectors (Secondary) was organized on 29 May
2020, where the expert illustrated the situation with simulated 2020 marks, since the real A2
marks were not yet known.

The Statistics Department of the Spanish Ministry of Education was also consulted (Spain
having the Chairmanship of the 2020 EB session) on this approach and the Ministry entirely
supported the proposed method.

Following a positive opinion expressed by the Board of Inspectors Secondary, the President
of the 2020 EB session gave also a favorable opinion on the presented methodology of
moderation.

On 5 June 2020 all the marks were put into the system and the following preliminary results
could be observed:

 Average final mark: 81.28 (while the average final marks in 2015=2019 were between
78.01 and 78.84)
 Number of failing pupils: 27 (while in years 2015-2019 the number varied from 38 to
51)
 Number of with a result over 95: 76 (while the number varied between 18 and 23 in the
past 5 years)
 Highest result: 98.2 (the highest result from 2015 to 2019 varied between 93.17 and
98.96, and only twice in the last 10 years the highest result was over 98).

During the meeting of the Board of Inspectors Secondary Cycle on 15 June 2020, members
of BIS considered this result as a statistical relevant deviation from previous years which would
require – in line with the decision of the Board of Governors of April 2020 – moderation.

Following the discussions, it was proposed that the moderation applied would have a limit.
After discussion it has been agreed that this limit would be set to 1.5 (below the pupil's
preliminary mark). This value is in line with what happens during a typical EB session where
a difference of 1,5 between the preliminary mark and the final mark in the Baccalaureate
(average of final marks 1,50 lower than the average of preliminary marks) is regularly
registered.

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