For Cédric Villani, mathematician and deputy (ex-LRM), the baccalaureate reform has accentuated certain biases. Candidate for a new mandate in Essonne, the one who now shows his support for Europe Ecologie-Les Verts regrets the accentuation of the differences in levels in this discipline, and the low proportion of girls in the “maths” specialty in terminale.
In 2018, you wrote, with Inspector General Charles Torossian, a report on the teaching of mathematics in France, where you made twenty-one proposals. Four years later, concerns about the level in mathematics of young French people have increased. Has your report gone unanswered?
The 2018 report focused mainly on primary school, because this is where the most important levers for reforming the whole system related to mathematics education are found. Over the past four years, it cannot be said that the government has done nothing. An overhaul has been carried out at the level of primary teacher training, accompanied by the establishment of mathematics laboratories in secondary schools, which allow teachers to reflect collectively on the teaching of their discipline. The vast majority of the actions recommended by the report have been taken into account.
It is nevertheless true that an unprecedented group of learned societies, associations of mathematics, astronomy and astrophysics, biometrics, biophysics, computer science, engineers, physics and chemistry, scientific preparatory classes, was formed, very critical of the consequences of the reorganization of the baccalaureate.
Several unfavorable indicators have been observed regarding this reform, in particular that girls drop out of mathematics prematurely. In 2021, only 25% of high school girls received more than 6 hours of mathematics instruction per week compared to 45% before the reform. Then, it is the discipline which has lost the most teaching hours during this reorganization of the baccalaureate. This does not correspond to the commitments of the Ministry of National Education at the start of the five-year term.
It was also noted that mathematics has not found a place in the common core of the subjects that high school students must follow. Finally, while higher education teachers recognize that part of the pool (those who have followed the “expert maths” option) arrives in their classes with an interesting level, there is nevertheless a great heterogeneity of profiles; this does not date from this reform, but the situation has worsened.
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