Which French high schools have the best results? Consult our ranking, before the 2024 list.
France has nearly 3,800 high schools, but not all of them have the same levels of exam results. Some establishments even manage to display baccalaureate success levels equal to or approaching 100%. Where are these high schools of excellence? Which are the best in France? Each year, Linternaute.com unveils its prize list, the ranking of the best high schools 2024 will be revealed on March 20, 2024 on this page. The results of the previous one can be found here.
City by city, department by department, and even region by region, find out which are the best-rated high schools. Thanks to our methodology established on three specific points (which we detail here), establishments are classified according to the score obtained using the criteria used by our editorial team:
So, what is the best high school near you? Using our search engine and our map of France, discover the ratings we have given to each establishment and their ranking in the city or department of your choice. Also examine the changes in the rate of mentions or even the rate of access to the baccalaureate for the second year for each of the establishments that interest you. It is thus possible to compare these different indicators within the same establishment. For each high school, the success rate of an establishment or its access rate from the second to the baccalaureate can be compared to the same rates at the departmental or national level.
What is the best high school in your department, your region (or academy) or even your city? Do provincial or small high schools do better than “bac factories” in terms of baccalaureate results and access to this same exam? See how high schools are performing locally with our city list and map.
In our high school rankings, a high school in France takes first place hands down: the Louis Le Grand high school located in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. The Jeannine Manuel Active Bilingual School (Paris XV) is not in first position in our ranking, having remained in pole position for ten consecutive years.
The Louis Le Grand high school has achieved a 100% baccalaureate success rate, with support for students from second grade up to the baccalaureate established at 98% and a 99% honors rate. Which allows us to give it a score of 19.85/20.
Founded in 1563, the former high school of Charles Baudelaire, Eugène Delacroix, Victor Hugo, Alain Juppé and Jacques Chirac perpetuates its tradition of excellence. The students of the Louis-le-Grand high school are often called “magnoludovicians”, and the establishment is commonly referred to under the acronym “LLG”. The high school includes preparatory classes in addition to the high school itself.
What are the best high schools in France? Due to the game of ties, a Top 10 proves impossible this year. According to our new ranking, based on ministry data, the following 15 establishments are among the best performing in France. Here are their notes:
What is the secret of the best high schools in France? We tried to find out a little more about the 20 establishments of excellence in the high school rankings.
Parisian high schools are in pole position in the high school rankings. Lycée Louis Le Grand, a public establishment in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, is first in our ranking of high schools. In the current edition of the high school rankings, the Top 20 of the best general and technological high schools in France included no less than 12 Parisian high schools and 8 high schools located not in Paris but still in the Paris region. A stable score for the capital’s high schools compared to the previous edition of the high school rankings, since 12 Parisian high schools (intramural) then appeared in the Top 20.
What are high school rankings? And how do we develop it? The IVAL, or “High School Added Value Indicators”, are a series of indicators provided each year by the Ministry of Education, which make it possible to assess the capacity of each high school to take its students from second grade to ‘for the baccalaureate diploma. These IVALs go well beyond the simple success rate for the baccalaureate and take into account the “access rate” to the baccalaureate, i.e. the proportion of students able to obtain the diploma from the second, the first and even from the final year .
These rates are calculated by the DEPP (Directorate of Evaluation, Foresight and Performance) for the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports, based on the results of the previous baccalaureate session, in the approximately 4,300 high schools in France (general, technical and professional). From this data, we establish a list of the best high schools in France with a ranking, high school by high school, of the 4,300 establishments (2,300 general and technical high schools, approximately 2,000 vocational high schools) in our country. For each of the establishments, the following figures are published:
Please note: changes should be noted with each edition of the high school rankings. Since 2015, one criterion in particular has disappeared: that of the “rate of leaving baccalaureate holders”, in other words the proportion of baccalaureate holders out of all students leaving the establishment (second, first and final years combined). In 2018, a new criterion made its debut, that of the baccalaureate grade rate (“fairly good”, “good”, “very good”).
Linternaute.com has decided to establish its ranking by taking into account three of the indicators provided by the Ministry of Education: the baccalaureate success rate, the access rate to the secondary baccalaureate and the rate of mentions to the baccalaureate, all series included. We assign a coefficient of 2 for the baccalaureate success rate, which accounts for half of our evaluation. We believe that this measure remains relevant, despite the growing percentages of baccalaureate holders. But this final success is not, in our eyes, the only useful indicator. To measure the quality of teaching over time, we add the “secondary baccalaureate access rate”, which accounts for a quarter of the grade, to which has been added since 2018 the “bac mention rate”, which constitutes the last quarter of the overall score awarded to each high school.
