Le New York Times se penche sur le baccalauréat.

The weeklong national test is the sole element considered in the awarding of high school diplomas, themselves known as bacs; without a passing score, university doors are closed and job prospects are generally grim. The test is at the core of all high school curriculums, in Paris as in France’s far-flung overseas territories, in establishments both public and private, and many consider it to be a foundational rite of passage, even an element of French identity.

Like so very much else in France, it is an emanation of the government in Paris, which decrees the testing dates and approves each of the questions. It is, in the words of a 2008 Senate report, “the veritable cornerstone of our educational system” and a “national monument.”

And yet, for all the reverence, nostalgia or stress that it still inspires, its utility is growing ever less clear, according to French officials, students, parents, teachers and employers — most everyone, really.

“Each year more ridiculous, the comedy of the bac has returned,” Luc Ferry, the philosopher who once served as education minister and oversaw the test, wrote this month in the newspaper Le Figaro.

France once liked to think of its educational system as a model for the world, but studies show academic performance here to be unexceptional and on the decline, and officials have in recent years begun to fret. Increasingly, the bac is viewed as the flagship of a flawed system, a symbol not so much of French excellence but of what is wrong with education here.