A mother's love goes a long way; especially this mother who tried to ensure academic success for her daughter by doing it herself
While Irish students struggle with the Leaving Cert, their French counterparts are grappling with the baccalauréat, or the “bac“, as it’s more commonly known amongst those who sit it.
One Parisian student was hoping to get a good head start in the English exam by having her mother (who presumably had better linguistic skills than her daughter) take her place.
The fifty-something was rumbled last week when she sat to take the English paper in place of her daughter, according to a police source. At about 15:30, the principal of the secondary school in question in the 10th arrondissement of north central Paris called the police to say that “cheating was taking place” in a baccalauréat test that had been organised by the school.
The 52-year-old woman, who was trying to replace her daughter in the English test, was spotted by an exam supervisor who had seen the face of the real bac student when she took the philosophy paper a few days earlier. The supervisor quickly realised that it wasn’t the same student.
The woman was brought to 10th arrondissement commissariat, where police issued her with a caution (but no slap on the wrist).
Just as we in Ireland are discussing to death the whole validity of our school examination systems, so too does the debate go on in France, centred around the baccalauréat. This is the equivalent of the Leaving Certificate (although it’s closer to the British A-level examination due to the fact that it concentrates on far fewer subjects.
The latest poll published in Yahoo! France, asking a sample of French citizens if they were in favour of getting rid of the bac altogether, 24% of them said yes, 37% of them said no, but that a total overhaul of the examination system was needed and 39% of them said simply non.