Baccalaureate for All

The 2024 baccalaureate had the highest passing rate in the last 10 years, at 76.4%

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 12.11.2024, 13:20

The 2024 baccalaureate had the highest passing rate in the last 10 years, at 76.4%. However, the confrontation with the “maturity exam” scares many, so several female students from Cluj, after graduating from high school with high averages and successfully passing the Baccalaureate, thought to make this experience easier for the less fortunate students like them. Baccademia became the name of the project, launched under the motto: “Pass the Baccalaureate without a headache”.

The founder of the Baccademia project, Bianca Ionescu, told us:

“Our story actually began in 2022. In that year, I took the baccalaureate exam and got a 10 in history, and a 9, 80 in Romanian language and literature. Although I was a Romanian national Olympian since middle school and continued to compete throughout high school, I still felt the stress of any 12th grader as the baccalaureate exam approached. And then, after taking the exam, I chose to digitize the materials I had structured. I had spent six months structuring the matter alone. In 2022 I started helping students online. I shared those materials, free of charge, on an Instagram account, and practically the generation that took the exam in 2023 was the first one I helped. And the idea of the Baccademia only started to take shape when the students sent me their baccalaureate results. For example, out of about 3000 students helped, most passed the exam with a grade above 9.50. Some even got a clean 10. For example, people who took the exam after 10 years or 20 years also got very good grades! And practically at that moment I realized that my materials really had a positive impact.”

As a high-schooler until recently, Bianca Ionescu, added:

“High school students were tired of the thick books, written in black and white and full of details that are not required for the baccalaureate, and I understood their frustration because I was in their shoes. We are in a country where it is still noticeable that the situation before the exams does not change much, it does not improve compared to previous years. It has been 10 months since we founded the Baccademia Publishing House and we differentiate ourselves, somehow, by the fact that our team is made up only of students who obtained a grade 10 in the baccalaureate exam, or in certain subjects. And also, all our collections are colored and synthesized. It also includes, for example, advice, solved topics, or jokes in places, jokes that the current generation would clearly understand.”

Irina Selagea, is the author of the geography book for Baccademia and responsible for the interactive videos on social media. We asked her what the Baccademia was for her:

“I’m the type of person who likes to help people and I’m very interested in bringing a new perspective when it comes to studying for the baccalaureate, because most people think it’s simply a test that you just have to cram for. But I would like to propose the idea and the solution that any baccalaureate test could be passed very easily just by understanding, by jokes, and by a more entertaining way than some very expensive materials or very long materials. I came up with the solution for students who are from Generation Z, who have a different understanding of how to learn certain subjects. And, quite simply, I wanted to bring a new way to motivate the student, perhaps, to read Romanian literature in a more non-conformist way.”

As feedback, the Baccademia team said that several students told them that, with the help of these materials, they remembered in one minute all the one-hour material taught in class.

And the team continues its work! Here is Bianca Ionescu:

“We still lack the computer science, chemistry and physics collections, and we are currently working on them. They will be published sometime in September, around the middle of the month, we hope. Our success is largely due to the TikTok platform. That’s where we got popular with the videos made with artificial intelligence, for example. We’ve racked up almost 1,000,000 total views on the account so far.”

There’s nothing more to say than Happy learning! Now it seems easier!