Page 7 - BACC Report

Draft Report on European Baccalaureate 2020
The members of the Board of Inspectors agreed with the expert that it was not advisable to
apply a uniform reduction of mark for all the pupils for the following reasons:

1. Statistical reasons: the distribution of final marks would result distorted, so that one
of the main objectives of the moderation would not be achieved.
2. Students at the bottom of the scale: 44 pupils would fail instead of 27, or 17 pupils
would be artificially given the minimum passing mark, so that the moderation would
not any longer be uniform anyway.
3. Best students: only 28 would remain in the 95-100 range.

Consequently, the members of the Board agreed that gradual moderation at the extremes of
the distribution should be preferred, as formerly agreed.
This approach, staying within the frame set by the Board of Governors at its meeting on 15 –
17 April 2020, was supported by all members of the Board of Inspectors Secondary Cycle and
approved by the Chairman of the 2020 European Baccalaureate session and can be
summarized as follows:

Gradual moderation applied, through a formula, to all students (except the top scoring one
and those having less than 60), with a maximum drop of 1,5.
It is worth underlining that even with the applied moderation, the average mark remains higher
than in previous years, and so is the number of pupils with the highest marks.

As a consequence, on 22 June 2020 pupils received their marks which were calculated
according the Bac mark formula and the Decision of the Board of Governors from 15-17 April
2020 (20% A1, 20% A2, 30% B1, 30% B2 which is a replication of B1). The detailed formula
used for moderation is presented in Annex I.

This results in a situation that the overall final mark is not simply an average of the final subject
marks, but also taking into consideration the necessary moderation which was agreed at the
possibly lowest level, at the same time not threatening the reputation of the European Schools
and the European Baccalaureate and thus, most important, not affecting the credibility of the
diploma delivered to the EB candidates.

The whole process was explained in more details in Annex 1 of this document: FINAL
REPORT ON THE MODERATION METHOD FOR THE EUROPEAN BACCALAUREATE
MARKS IN 2020 (Ref.: 2020-07-D-2-en-1)

The decision of the Board of Governors has allowed all EB candidates to request to sit the full
EB session in autumn (or alternatively to repeat the year), shall they be unsatisfied with the
obtained result (due to moderation or any other reason).

More details regarding the extraordinary session in September can be found later in this report
in a separate chapter focus on that.

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