Tunisia Way

The final four years of formal schooling are open to all holders of the Diplôme de Fin d’Etudes de l’Enseignement de BaseEnseignement secondaire and focus on preparing students for university-level studies or entry into the workforce. (secondary education) is divided into two two-year stages: general academic and specialized education.  Students choose, or are placed into, one of six streams which will partly determine the university programs a student is eligible for if he/she chooses to pursue tertiary studies.

In the academic stream, all students follow a common curriculum (tronc commun) during the first two years, after which they choose one of five specializations from: language arts (lettres), mathematics, technical sciences, experimental sciences, and economics and management. The language of instruction in technical, scientific and mathematical fields is French; with the exception of foreign languages, all others are taught in Arabic. 

Students are evaluated on a cumulative basis, with end-of-year grades calculated as an average of all end-of-trimester grades. As in the basic-education cycle, students must score more than 10 out of 20 as an average across all subject areas to progress to the next grade level. Students may repeat a year in the secondary cycle just once or, in certain cases, twice if the second repeat is in the final year of studies.

At the end of the fourth year of secondary studies students take the Examen National du Baccalauréat (baccalaureate exam). Students are examined in an average of six subjects, each of which is assigned a coefficient (weighting) depending on the stream. Students who complete the secondary cycle, but fail the baccalauréat are awarded a certificate of completion that can be used for entry into the workforce or for entry to further studies at a private school.

In 1995, the last year for which statistics are available, 42.5 percent of baccalauréat takers were successful. Students who pass the baccalaureate are guaranteed a place at university, although not necessarily in the discipline of their choosing.