The baccalauréat is the secondary-school leaving qualification of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and the prerequisite for higher education. For health studies it is more than a diploma: the stream chosen and the marks obtained determine whether a candidate reaches a faculty of medicine, since access is regulated in all three countries.
From medieval Latin baccalaureus, a first university degree, itself linked to bacca lauri, laurel berry; the modern French baccalauréat designates the secondary-school leaving examination.
Bac; bac scientifique; diplôme de fin d'études secondaires
Secondary school leaving certificate (baccalauréat)
In the three countries the baccalauréat concludes secondary education and opens access to university. For medicine it plays a double role, because the scientific streams are the ones that lead to health studies and because the marks obtained are used in the selection itself. The consequence is that the decisions taken two or three years before the examination, when a stream is chosen, already shape what will be possible afterwards. Candidates who are aiming at medicine should therefore treat the choice of stream and the level reached in the scientific subjects as part of their medical project rather than as a separate school matter.
The architecture differs in the detail. In Morocco, the baccalauréat gives the right to sit the national entrance examination for the faculties of medicine and pharmacy, and selection takes place in that examination. In Algeria and in Tunisia, admission is organised mainly through a national placement procedure in which the results obtained in the baccalauréat determine which programmes a candidate may enter, so that medical studies in Algeria and medical studies in Tunisia are reached by a sufficiently high overall result. In every case the number of places is limited and fixed in advance.
A Maghreb baccalauréat is also the document with which a candidate applies to a European university. Faculties abroad generally ask for the diploma and the detailed transcript, legalised by apostille or through consular channels depending on the issuing country, and translated by a sworn translator. Some programmes add an entrance test or a language requirement, and some expect particular subjects to have been taken. The practical recommendation is to request several certified copies of the diploma and the transcript as soon as they are issued, since a single original is rarely enough once several applications are running in parallel.
The choice made at this point has consequences far beyond the first year. A student who enters a European faculty will hold a European diploma, which is assessed in France under Directive 2005/36/EC if it comes from a member state, and which can be recognised at home in order to return and practise. A student who enters a national faculty will hold a Maghreb diploma, which is a third-country qualification in France and leads to the authorisation procedure there. Neither route is better in the abstract; what matters is to know which one you are entering.
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