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Why assess high schools?

Is the high school in my area a “good” high school? All parents ask themselves the question when choosing it for their children. It is, in part, to respond to this that the National Education establishes each year an evaluation that wants to be as pertinent as possible of its establishments, with a view to “ transparency “. But not only. This colossal work of evaluation must serve first” management tools for school principals, so that they have feedback on their work, these are also food for thought for teachers »recalls the director of evaluation, forecasting and performance of National Education, Fabienne Rosenwald.

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Under what criteria?

What is a “good” high school? The one who will present fabulous success rates in high school or the one who will accompany all his students, even the most rushed, until the exam without losing any along the way? As you can imagine, the evaluation of an establishment cannot be based on a single criterion. The National Education measures several: the rates of access to the baccalaureate, that is, the course of the students in the campus until they obtain their baccalaureate. It looks at the success of the students in the exam or in the marks obtained ” that we know are intimately related to success in higher education..

But it makes no sense to juxtapose the results of a highly selective private high school in a wealthy town with those of a public institution in a socially disadvantaged area. ” Not all establishments welcome the same social and academic profile of the students and, therefore, they do not face the same difficulties in leading them to success. To measure a school’s specific contribution, the success of each of its students must be compared to that of comparable students educated in comparable schools. “.

National Education considers a high school in relation to those that are similar to it and calculates an “added value”: positive when the high school performs better than expected from such a high school compared to the average of the high schools that are similar to it, negative when high school does less well.

Five “families” of schools emerge: “the successful ones”, which support them better and make them pass the exam better than comparable high schools; the “selective” ones, which make their students do better on the exam but lose it during schooling; the “companions”, who better support their students but whose students take a little longer to get the baccalaureate; the “neutrals”, who do neither better nor worse than what is expected of them; high schools “below expectations” of the National Education.

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Read our ranking

The National Education does not establish prize lists. We establish it based on your evaluation criteria. We opted to keep the first, the access fee for the second to the baccalaureate; then pass the exam; Finally, the mention rate. Each time, we consider the gross values ​​and the added values. Therefore, the table must be read as a whole: to take into account only the first positions in the ranking is to lose establishments that have done a good job.