All middle school students in France will have to follow an hour of awareness raising on “harassment and social networks” this week, said on Sunday June 11, the Minister of National Education, Pap Ndiaye, who recently promised to strengthen the fight against this scourge, after the suicide in May of a teenager.
“This hour will be an opportunity to recall how the use of social networks can accentuate the phenomena of harassment” and “to emphasize the responsibility of each” in the use of these networks, detailed the minister. He asked the principals of the 7,000 colleges (3.4 million students in total) to organize this intervention “in conjunction with the educational teams”.
Pressured by the family of Lindsay, a teenager who ended her life in May in Pas-de-Calais, the government announced last week that the fight against bullying would be the “top priority” for the start of the 2023 school year. .
In January, a 13-year-old child, Lucas, committed suicide in the Vosges. The schoolboy’s relatives had denounced acts of harassment, revealing the mockery and homophobic insults of which he had said he was the victim of other students at his school.
“Still a long way to go”
Pap Ndiaye will bring together the 14,000 heads of establishments, as well as the national education inspectors (IEN) or even the rectors, on Tuesday by videoconference, to “remind them of all the levers at their disposal” and “collect their feedback from ground,” the ministry said in a statement.
The subject was also on the menu of consultations carried out since Friday, and until Monday, with the unions, the federations of parents of pupils, but also the Authority for the regulation of audiovisual and digital communication and the leaders of social networks. . On June 29, the Minister of National Education must, moreover, bring together the officials responsible for the fight against harassment in each academy, “in order to recall the procedures to be followed and the new measures which will have to be implemented”.
Recognizing that national education had “still a long way to go” on this issue, Mr. Ndiaye had promised on June 6 additional means to fight against bullying at school. A referent on harassment – nurse, principal education adviser or teacher – must in particular be appointed “in each establishment” at the start of the school year, he announced.
