A new diploma in France: The French International Baccalaureate (FIB)

From September 2022 onwards, the international option of the baccalaureate (OIB) evolves and will be replaced by the French International Baccalaureate (FIB) (baccalauréat français international, BFI).

Students entering première in the fall of 2022 will follow the new FIB curriculum during their two years of the final cycle for the first time – the first session of the FIB exam taking place in 2024.

Students will pass all the exams corresponding to their chosen branch, such as all other students in France. However, they will sit additional specific examinations in the foreign language as well as in history/geography of their chosen section. For the Chinese sections, a specific mathematics test replaces the history-geography test.

Fourteen sections currently lead to the O.I.B. and who will change to the FIB: American, Arabic, British, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. There are a number of establishments throughout France offering this specific branch of education.

What will change?

• No changes to the International Sections up until the penultimate year (première) of high school (lycée)
  • The international sections (IS) continue to offer a course from kindergarten to the class of ‘seconde’
• Students who have not previously followed the International Section can however enrol to pass the FIB
• The FIB is available, depending on the institution, in a bilingual, trilingual or quadrilingual course. It built on the structure of the general French baccalaureate
• The specific teachings (cultural and linguistic deepening, non-linguistic discipline) are reinforced and supplemented by the new teaching of knowledge of the world.
• The weighting of the subjects pertaining to these international sections within the overall baccalaureate result has been enhanced

Better recognition

The creation of the FIB is the result of exchange and bilateral agreements with national and international bodies of higher education, following a review of the position of specific international educational programmes in France.

It allows better recognition of the quality of the students’ academic career path, their commitment and their work, thanks to an enhanced appreciation in terms of coefficients and visibility of the diploma.

Further reading:

Official brochure about the BFI

Programme of new teaching: knowledge of the world

Eduscol – le-baccalaureat français international (BFI)