All eyes are on Parcoursup, as the registration phase for high school students opens on Thursday 20 January, who will then make their choice of courses in higher education. Among the candidates for the presidential election of April 2022, some see in this platform created at the beginning of the five-year term either a total foil, or a good tool, still perfectible.
In his speech to university presidents at the France Universities congress on January 13, the likely candidate for his own succession Emmanuel Macron hailed in Parcoursup a “tremendous success” while conceding the persistence of a margin of improvement. The subject of postbaccalaureate orientation is not “not fully processed” and requires “a work of clarification, field orientation, simplification”. “Sometimes we leave families in very poor condition when it comes to entering [les choix de filières] in the app”, he underlined, deploring shortcomings in the “link between high school and university”.
The candidate of the Les Républicains (LR) party, Valérie Pécresse, also highlights flaws, “without calling into question the existence of the platform, which is a tool”, explains his adviser, Max Brisson, senator for Pyrénées-Atlantiques. “You have to think of the right link between high school and bachelor’s degree to give full meaning to the specialty courses chosen by high school students, he continues. The teachers must advise the students so that they do not move towards a pairing of specialties which would put them in difficulty to integrate a formation of the higher education. »
The “prerequisites” as well as “transparent and objective criteria” defined by each formation must be “more displayed” through post-baccalaureate courses. The LR candidate wants to reinstate final exams in the baccalaureate to redo one “true national exam”. “This will give back a raison d’être to the baccalaureate, which today is a formality for many students”, justifies Max Brisson, who doubts that the 93.8% of baccalaureate holders in the 2021 session have “really validated the mastery of acquired skills”.
“Transparent rules”
On the left, the candidates are largely in favor of the removal of Parcoursup, without however detailing concretely what they would replace the platform with. Socialist Party candidate Anne Hidalgo was the first to denounce “an algorithm that decides the lives of young people”. Behind the platform is “the selection system put in place by Emmanuel Macron” who is targeted, says Orlane François, former president of the General Federation of Student Associations and member of the campaign team.
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