“The electroshock has begun”: the Minister of Education Gabriel Attal continued his offensive on school bullying on Monday, with a visit to the Versailles rectorate to “create transparency” on the “disapproval” letters received by families , before the announcement of an interministerial plan on Wednesday.
“I called for a collective electroshock, and the electroshock has begun,” insisted the minister, who plans to bring together the rectors again on Thursday, the day after the announcement of this plan, which must be unveiled on Wednesday by the Prime Minister. Minister Elisabeth Borne.
This plan was announced in June after the suicide of 13-year-old Lindsay. “The philosophy of action that we want to take with the Prime Minister is clear: 100% prevention, 100% detection and 100% reaction,” insisted Gabriel Attal.
He spoke after a visit to the Versailles rectorate, at the center of several controversies, where he came in particular to “bring transparency” to so-called “reproach” letters, addressed to families.
During the last school year 2022-2023, 120 letters of this type were sent to parents of students, of which 55 “seem to raise questions”, detailed the minister. “Obviously, work will continue to identify what led to the sending of these letters and whether it was justified to send them or not,” he continued.
Mr. Attal explained that each family concerned would be “contacted individually for an exchange with agents of the rectorate”, believing that “we must put people back on all floors to manage these harassment situations”.
This visit followed the revelation of a letter with a threatening tone, sent last May by the Versailles rectorate to the parents of Nicolas, a teenager who subsequently committed suicide in Poissy (Yvelines) after being the victim of harassment school. This letter was described as a “shame” by Gabriel Attal.
The services of the Versailles academy and its former rector, Charline Avenel, who left in July, have since come under fire. On Friday, the minister also condemned the terms of another letter, sent in May by the same rectorate to parents who this time complained of sexual touching of their daughter.
“There was an error, a mistake”, because the letter “was addressed to families who should not have received (it), in situations of school harassment, even sexual assault”, estimated the minister , deeming this situation “not acceptable”.
Each academy “will have to adopt an anti-harassment strategy” by “the end of the year”, added Mr. Attal, who launched an audit on the management of harassment cases over the last year school.
In the morning, the minister received the teaching unions, to discuss with them his ideas in this “absolutely essential” fight, in the words of Emmanuel Macron on Sunday.
During this meeting lasting more than two hours, the minister “discussed different avenues, including that of prevention, with his wish to emphasize the training of staff in the pHARe program” to combat harassment in educational establishments. , Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the first secondary-level union, told AFP.
There is also “the idea of ??making November 9 (national anti-harassment day) a day with normalized times throughout France to create a sort of big shock,” said Béatrice Laurent, Unsa-Education national secretary. .
The minister also presented avenues in terms of sanctions, such as the systematic confiscation of the mobile phone of the child perpetrator of serious cyber-harassment, which he had already mentioned on Friday during a visit to Denmark, or the possibility of prohibit access to social networks of minors involved.
He also indicated that he was working on setting up a questionnaire for all students in order to identify “weak signals” of harassment and on the creation of dedicated “brigades” on the subject in the rectorates.
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09/25/2023 19:48:16 – Versailles (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
