politics

Parcoursup and blockades: families, students seek reassurance

High-school students and parents at the guidance fair fear blockades will penalize Parcoursup applications, with no change for 2026 final-year classes.

france, canada, parcoursup, nahel, myriam, anxiogène, blocus, orientation

Key facts

  • The same concern can be read in Hicham and Fatima, bent over the brochure of a private school costing more than 8,000 euros a year. Their son, in his…
  • In the aisles of a guidance fair, high school students and parents are looking for bearings amid classes interrupted by blockades and uncertainty…
  • High school students fault it for its opacity, the stress it generates and the inequalities it deepens. According to franceinfo, the government has…

The same concern can be read in Hicham and Fatima, bent over the brochure of a private school costing more than 8,000 euros a year. Their son, in his final year of high school, has also missed classes. He did not come to the fair: he is taking remedial mathematics lessons.

In the aisles of a guidance fair, high school students and parents are looking for bearings amid classes interrupted by blockades and uncertainty over Parcoursup. The platform remains at the center of criticism.

High school students fault it for its opacity, the stress it generates and the inequalities it deepens. According to franceinfo, the government has promised to overhaul it starting in the 2027-2028 school year. Nothing changes, however, for this year's final-year students, who fear they will still be penalized by the hours of class they have missed.

On the map posted at the entrance, Nahel, 17, and his mother, Myriam, are looking for the engineering-school booths. They come from Étampes, in Essonne, where the high school has remained closed all week.

"He still has not had class since the return from vacation,"they say. Fatima told franceinfo:"It's a bit distressing, it's a somewhat anxiety-inducing situation."She mentions several colleagues whose children"ended up with nothing at the end of Parcoursup.""It comes down to a single test,"the parents lament.

Julien, a teacher, staffs the booth for public preparatory classes. He recounts being approached by a student's parent: her daughter has not had class for two weeks because of the blockades and is questioning her future on Parcoursup.

The teacher nevertheless tries to reassure. Parcoursup takes into account grades from the penultimate year as well as those from the first two terms of the final year."Assessing a student on six grades is still not outrageous, and it can have an impact on Parcoursup later on,"he says. A month of disrupted classes, in his view, will not change much.

For this year's final-year students, the announced reform brings no extra time. The fair then becomes a place where people compare the options they can turn to, tally the costs and try to gauge how much a few grades weigh against weeks of lost classes.

Dig deeper

What is Parcoursup?

It is France's national platform for admission to higher education, which ranks high-school students' choices mainly on the basis of their academic records. It is at the heart of the concerns of families whose classes have been interrupted.

Where are Étampes and Essonne located?

Étampes is a municipality in Essonne, a department south of Paris, in Île-de-France. That is where Nahel and his mother come from; his high school remained closed all week.

What does a blockade at a high school mean?

It is the blocking of a school by students or activists, which prevents classes from taking place. Here, these interruptions raise fears of a drop in the grades taken into account by Parcoursup.

Which grades does Parcoursup count for final-year students?

The platform notably retains grades from the penultimate year and those from the first two terms of the final year. A few weeks of lost classes therefore matter mainly if they lower these report cards.

What does the announced reform change for this year's students?

The planned changes apply only from the 2027-2028 school year. Current final-year students have neither extra time nor new rules to make up for missed classes.

Why are families looking at private schools and preparatory classes?

The fair is used to compare public pathways, such as preparatory classes, with private programs that sometimes cost more than 8,000 euros a year, amid uncertainty over academic records.

Lire en français