The early maths exam (épreuve anticipée): what Première students need to prepare from 2026-2027

Updated on 27 September 2026.

Preparation should start from the new official framework published in September 2026. The challenge is therefore not to start straight away with full papers: students first need to master the curriculum they are following, build up their automatic skills, then gradually increase the amount of work done in exam conditions.

1. The official rules to know for the 2027 exam

One point about the calendar can be confusing. Students in Première (the second year of lycée, upper secondary school) during the 2026-2027 school year sit their maths exam in June 2027, but early, as part of the 2028 session of the baccalauréat (the French school-leaving exam). It is therefore the new definition published in the Bulletin officiel (the Ministry of Education’s official gazette) of 17 September 2026 that applies to this cohort.

According to the note de service (official circular) of 11 September 2026, the exam has the following features:

• duration: 2 hours;
• coefficient: 2;
• marked out of 20 points;
• a first part worth 6 points devoted to automatic skills, in the form of short-answer questions;
• a second part worth 14 points comprising two or three independent exercises;
• calculators banned for the whole exam;
• two points out of twenty take into account command of language, in particular the quality of the wording of the reasoning and the use of appropriate vocabulary.

This last rule deserves to be built into preparation: finding the right result is not always enough. Students also need to learn to present a clear line of working, use the appropriate mathematical terms and state their justifications clearly.

The national date is already known. The official 2027 exam calendar sets the written épreuve anticipée (early exam) in maths for the morning of Monday 21 June 2027. The information on each candidate’s individual exam notice naturally remains the practical reference.

Three different papers depending on the maths studied in Première

Not all students sit the exam on the same curriculum. The official text provides for three papers corresponding respectively to:

• the maths specialisation subject in the general Première;
• the specific maths built into the enseignement scientifique (the common-core science course) for general-track students not taking the specialisation;
• the common maths curriculum of the technological Première set for the exam.

The first thing to do before downloading exercises is therefore to check the curriculum the student is actually preparing. The new Première curricula also come into force at the start of the 2026-2027 school year. The corresponding texts and resources are gathered on the Éduscol (the Ministry of Education’s resource portal for teachers) page Programmes et ressources en mathématiques de la voie générale et technologique (maths curricula and resources for the general and technological tracks).

2. What changes in practice in how to prepare

Preparing for the exam only in the weeks leading up to 21 June would be a misreading of its format. Automatic skills are assessed without a calculator, while the second part requires students to use the knowledge and skills of the curriculum in more developed exercises.

Preparation should therefore move forward on three fronts in parallel:

Front	What to work on	How to check progress
Automatic skills	Calculations and procedures that need to become quick and reliable	Short questions done without a calculator, with less and less hesitation
Curriculum	Concepts, methods and reasoning specific to the track followed	Chapter exercises, then exercises combining several concepts
Exam	Time management, written presentation, choice of methods and stamina	Timed exercises, then full papers in real conditions

Above all, do not wait until April or May to discover that some basic calculations are still too slow without a calculator. Conversely, doing full papers from September is not very informative, since several parts of the Première curriculum have not yet been studied.

3. Make a starting diagnosis before adding revision hours

In September or early autumn, the aim is not yet to measure a “likely bac mark”. You need to identify what risks slowing the student down during the year.

The diagnosis can be organised around four questions.

Are the Seconde basics sufficiently secure?

A difficulty with the Première curriculum may stem from an older prerequisite from Seconde (the first year of lycée). Algebra, fractions, equations, percentages, functions or reading graphs, for example, can become obstacles if they still require a lot of effort.

This is not about redoing the whole Seconde curriculum. A few well-chosen exercises are enough to spot the points that are genuinely shaky. Work can then be targeted rather than multiplying general revision. The article on difficulties in maths explains this approach of diagnosing by type of error.

Can the student work without a calculator?

Since calculators are banned for the full two hours of the exam, they cannot remain the default tool all year. A student needs to gradually learn to recognise what they can calculate, transform or check mentally or on paper.

A good practice is to distinguish, during homework, between exercises where the calculator is educationally useful and those that should be reworked without it with the automatic skills in mind.

Do the errors come from the lesson or from the reasoning?

One student may know a formula without recognising when it should be used. Another may choose the right method and then make a calculation error. A third may solve the problem but write too little to make their reasoning understandable.

These three difficulties call for different exercises. Systematically adding a new set of exercises without sorting the errors often produces a lot of work for little information.

Is the written work precise enough?

The new definition of the exam gives an explicit place to command of language. From the start of the year, it is therefore useful to require complete answers when the reasoning calls for it: state a property, justify an implication, define the objects used and conclude clearly.

4. Preparation calendar from September 2026 to 21 June 2027

The following calendar is not an official prescription. It is a working framework for gradually getting closer to exam conditions without sacrificing learning of the Première curriculum.

Period	Priority	Recommended work
September – October	Diagnosis and basics	Identify shaky prerequisites, start automatic skills without a calculator and follow the lycée curriculum
November – December	Consolidation	Keep up short practice of automatic skills and check that the first chapters are still mastered several weeks after studying them
January – February	Mixing concepts	Add exercises in which the method is not given and regularly revisit earlier chapters
March – April	Exam format	Work on sets of timed exercises, written presentation and the first part without a calculator
May	Mock exams	Do representative papers or compilations over increasingly long periods, then analyse every error
Early June – 20 June	Consolidation	Fix the last weak points, keep up the automatic skills and do a few full mock exams without piling on new methods
21 June 2027	Exam	Sit the paper corresponding to the curriculum prepared

To build a personal calendar around the student’s tests, holidays and other deadlines, the guide to revision schedules helps organise the work on a finer scale.

5. Lessons, exercises, sample papers and past papers: in what order?

Effective preparation does not mean piling up papers. Each type of resource serves a different purpose.

1. Start with the lesson and the chapter exercises

While a concept has only just been introduced, the priority is to understand it. The student should be able to explain the definitions, recognise the situations in which a method applies and solve direct exercises.

2. Add automatic skills very early

They need to be kept up over time. Short, regular sets are often more sensible than a long dedicated session once a month. The aim is to reduce the mental cost of basic calculations so as to keep more attention for reasoning.

3. Gradually mix chapters

In a learning exercise, the chapter title often points almost directly to the tool to use. That will be less true on exam day. You therefore need to gradually set questions for which the student has to work out the relevant method themselves.

4. Use the sample papers with their date in mind

The official resources already published, including the sujets zéro (sample papers), remain useful for understanding the type of skills assessed and finding exercises. You do, however, need to check that they match the definition of the exam applicable to the 2026-2027 year.

This is particularly important this year: the September 2026 circular replaces the previous definition for students taking the 2028 session. The first part is now defined as a list of short-answer questions. An older document presenting a different format should therefore not be blindly reproduced as an exact simulation of the 21 June 2027 exam.

5. Keep full mock exams for when preparation is well advanced

A two-hour mock exam becomes genuinely useful once most of the relevant curriculum has been studied. After each attempt, the correction should go further than the mark obtained: how many points were lost through not knowing the lesson, through technical error, through misreading, through lack of justification or through time management?

It is this analysis that makes it possible to decide on the next piece of work.

6. How many hours a week should you plan?

No official text sets a number of hours a week of individual preparation for this exam. The amount needed depends on the track followed, the starting level and the work already required by the school.

To avoid artificially creating a second week of lessons alongside lycée, you can think in terms of additional workload specifically devoted to the exam:

• in the first term: about 1 to 2 hours a week can be a benchmark for a student without major difficulties, split between automatic skills and consolidation;
• between January and March: the amount can rise to 2 to 3 hours when chapters start to be mixed;
• in the last few weeks: some students may occasionally devote more time to mock exams and corrections.

These amounts are practical benchmarks, not official recommendations. A student who consistently masters their lessons has no reason to mechanically double their working time. Conversely, a significant gap should be dealt with as soon as it is identified rather than compensated for in May by piling on hours.

The best indicator remains progress on comparable tasks: does the student succeed more often without help? Are their automatic skills more reliable? Do they choose the right method faster? Is their reasoning better written?

7. The most common preparation mistakes

Waiting until spring to work without a calculator. A skill that has to become automatic is built gradually. Automatic skills should be worked on throughout the year.

Only doing exercises from the current chapter. The student sometimes ends up succeeding because they already know which tool is expected. Mixing concepts makes it possible to check that they can really choose their method.

Relying on an old format without checking its date. For the 2026-2027 cohort, the most recent reference text is the one published in September 2026. Older resources can still be useful as a bank of exercises without necessarily being an exact reproduction of the coming exam.

Doing too many full papers too early. A poor mark on a paper that includes concepts not yet studied does not provide a very useful diagnosis.

Neglecting written presentation. The ability to word reasoning correctly is now explicitly part of the marking. You therefore also need to correct how the working is presented, not just the results.

Revising every concept with the same intensity. Time should be directed towards the errors actually observed. A concept that is mastered and still remembered several weeks later does not need the same amount of work as a calculation that still causes repeated errors.

8. When should you add private maths tutoring?

Support is not necessary simply because a new exam exists. It becomes relevant when the student needs a diagnosis or follow-up that their usual work does not give them.

A few situations are particularly telling:

• the same errors keep coming back despite corrections;
• the student understands the solutions but cannot get started alone;
• gaps from Seconde are getting in the way of several Première chapters;
• the student works hard but the work is poorly targeted;
• automatic skills remain too slow without a calculator;
• the student cannot explain or write up their reasoning;
• mock exams reveal a lasting problem of method or time management.

The private tutor can then start from real test papers and exercises, isolate the type of error, work on a specific objective and then check in the following sessions that the student is succeeding more on their own.

On NOEO, the family can browse the tutors offering private maths tutoring for Première. The support can then continue between sessions: sessions in NOEO Live, the tutor’s session report, associated documents and, on the student’s initiative, the creation of a Learn pack containing a revision sheet, flashcards and a quiz.

9. The official documents to check before building your schedule

To avoid preparing for an exam using information that has become out of date, three documents should serve as the reference.

1. The current definition of the exam: it sets out the duration, the structure, the curricula concerned, the calculator ban and the marking.
2. The official 2027 calendar: it sets the national date of Monday 21 June 2027.
3. The curriculum corresponding to the student’s track: the maths specialisation, the specific maths built into the enseignement scientifique or the technological track.