French Bac exams 2024: results, resit dates and grades explained

The pass-rate for this year’s Baccalaureate exams has been released, showing a small improvement on last year’s figures. 

Out of 718,400 pupils who took the exams, 85.5% received a passing grade. This is 0.6% higher than in 2023. 

Pupils who took the ‘technical’ Baccalaureate (more focused on practical studies and trade skills) had a pass rate of 78.5%, a 0.4% increase on the year before. 

The largest jump came for those taking the ‘professional’ Baccalaureate, which saw pass rates jump 3% from last year, with 76.6% of students passing.

The exams, which are the final ones taken by pupils in French secondary school, and give them an overall grade for their secondary education, began earlier this year with the traditional philosophy exam. 

Read more: French 2024 Bac exams begin and why philosophy is always first

Pupils need to attain more than 50% (10 out of 20) as an overall grade – calculated from their results in all of the subjects they sat exams for – to pass.

However, not all subjects are weighted equally, with some exams contributing more towards final grades than others.

What happens for those who failed? 

Nearly 45,000 students, or 6.2% of those who sat the exams, received grades that were too low to pass, and will not receive their diploma. This is 0.4% less than last year.

They will need to re-sit the exams in 2025. 

However, the remaining 8.3% of students received a poor overall grade (between 8 and 10 out of 20), still have a chance to pass this year, as they are able to take ‘catch-up’ exams. 

These take place this week (July 9 to 11), and see them re-sit exams in two of the subjects where they received less than 10 as their final grade. The pupils will also need to take a 40-minute oral exam.