A Different School System

Dirk Beauregard on the French system, now 200 years old:

"For better or worse, the Baccalauréat works, and is still a reasonable indicator of educational excellence, furthermore the Baccalauréat is national and nationalised. Candidates sit the same papers in the same subject at the same time all over France. There are no private exam boards. State education mobilises thousands of teachers to get everything marked within ten days, and all candidates get their results in the first week of July. There is no single Baccalauréat that is easier than another. There is no exam board reputed to be more difficult or better than another. It is true educational equality, and it works. Why reform it, other than the fact it is 200 years old and therefore has to be modernised in the name of fashionable progress.

So, all the candidates, for better or worse, have their results, and this week they are signing on at university. Come Friday, everything will be sorted for the start of the new university year, and France can go on holiday. Kids in Britain will get their results in late August and spend the rest of their summer trying to get a place at university. Seems a bit late to me."

For someone with no children, it's probably easy for me to overestimate the fragmentation (that may not be the right word) of the US education system. I know we have the SAT's and I assume the National Merit exams and the application process to college is being standardized and No Child Left Behind has forced some uniformity. But I'm still amazed at the difference between our system and the Europeans.