Page 11 - BACC Report

Draft Report on European Baccalaureate 2021
• C : preliminary mark
• A : class mark
• B : Pre-Baccalaureate mark
• W : written examinations mark
• O : oral examinations mark
At that point in time, the written examinations were planned to take place as foreseen, i.e. from
31 May to 11 June 2021.

This possible decision also provided for it to be taken only after two major stages of
consultation had been completed. The first was with the members of the Board of Inspectors
(Secondary Cycle, BoI), the second, with the members of the Board of Governors (BoG).

At its meeting in April 2021, the Board of Governors took note of the Report of the Task Force
2
and confirmed the ‘Guidelines’ already approved at its meeting in December 2020. The
President of the EB session endorsed the Report.

In this report, the Task Force shared with the Board first 2021 results of the Pre-Baccalaureate
session in comparison with the sessions 2019 and 2020.
Moreover, it was announced that a more in-depth statistical analysis of the Pre-Baccalaureate
results 2021 would be elaborated by the European Baccalaureate Unit in cooperation with the
French Presidency of the EB 2021 session. The former Spanish and the incoming Croatian
presidencies were invited to cooperate within the context of TROIKA.
At that moment, the orals were already cancelled and possible calculation of the final BAC
mark was further consulted and agreed on. No cancellation of the written examinations would
happen on a system level.
In order to prepare the consultation process with the Board of Inspectors Secondary Cycle and
the Board of Governors on a potential moderation, an expert in psychometrics of the French
Presidency and an external expert, who had already intervened in the context of the 2020
moderation process, were consulted.
In preparation of the extraordinary meeting of the Board of Inspectors Secondary Cycle, two
meetings involving the President of the Baccalaureate session 2021, the President of the
Board of Inspectors Secondary Cycle, the two experts referred to and members of the Office
of the Secretary-General were organised on 17 and 21 May 2021.

In this context it is worth to mention an opinion of the French Presidency expert
(psychometrician). According to him, it is strictly impossible to know whether the results (a
priori or a posteriori) that will be obtained are the result of one or more of the following factors
▪ Negative impact of the health situation on teaching/learning conditions
▪ Negative impact of the health situation on the assessment conditions
▪ Impact (positive/negative) of teacher compensation on assessment practices
▪ Impact of the implementation of the new assessment system on the whole school.

The comparison of the distributions of the results of the year 2021, whatever the conditions of
organisation of the EB 2021 at the level of the final examinations, cannot be scientifically
founded. The result of this comparison, even if it were carried out with indicators of centrality
(mean, median, mode) and dispersion and range (variance, standard deviation, min/max, first
and third quartiles), would not make it possible to consider irrefutably that it is appropriate to
compensate positively or negatively for the marks obtained by the pupils. Indeed, the year
2021 is unique in its kind and could not, in this sense, be compared in a fair way for all pupils
to another. In summary, scientific moderation seems not to be possible for the 2021
Baccalaureate session.

2 2021-03-D-38
2021-07-D-1-en-1 Page 11 of 79