Europe 1 with AFP 4:58 p.m., February 12, 2024

More than one student per class on average victim of school harassment: the new Minister of Education Nicole Belloubet unveiled on Monday the results of an investigation into a phenomenon, "absolute priority" for the executive, far from the recent controversies over school.

After the failed and short-lived visit of Amélie Oudéa-Castéra to rue de Grenelle, mired in repeated controversies, the new holder of the post, Nicole Belloubet, chose for her first trip to a Reims college, a consensual theme for which the government has sounded from the start of the school year "general mobilization": the fight against school bullying.

“It’s a real scourge that we absolutely must regulate,” she declared to the press after meeting the college team and student ambassadors on the establishment’s anti-harassment program. . “A student should not come to his school with fear in his stomach, but on the contrary with a smile on his face.”

Survey conducted since November 2023

Nicole Belloubet revealed the results of a vast survey carried out in November 2023, in the wake of an interministerial plan against school bullying: 5% of schoolchildren from CE2 to CM2, 6% of middle school students and 4% of high school students are considered to be victims of harassment.

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The conclusions of the study reveal that a significant proportion of students must be subject to increased vigilance in the face of the risk of harassment, i.e. 19% of schoolchildren from CE2 to CM2, 6% of middle school students and 5% of high school students. These figures should be compared to previous figures widely relayed by the press and political leaders reporting that one in 10 students are affected by school bullying.

Empathy courses, confiscation of cell phones in serious cases, exclusion of student harassers on social networks: the executive had affirmed to make the fight against school bullying its “absolute priority” for the start of the 2023 school year after a series of tragedies like the suicide of young Lindsay in Pas-de-Calais or of a teenager, Nicolas, in Yvelines.

“Dialogue” with the unions

“In a school environment, harassment is the act, for a student or a group of students, of repeatedly subjecting a classmate to negative or even violent comments or behavior,” explains the National Education statistical service, which used a representative sample of 17,000 questionnaires submitted to a total of 7.5 million students from CE2 to final year.

This vast survey will now be carried out each year in the form of an “annual barometer of harassment in schools” intended to monitor the evolution of this phenomenon. If a risky situation is discovered via the questionnaire, "a new individual self-assessment during which anonymity will be lifted, with the parents' agreement" will be decided. Nicole Belloubet also specified that 35 students have been automatically changed schools for acts of harassment since the start of the 2023 school year.

She also announced a financial boost for school nurses and social workers who act as coordinators for the fight against harassment: they will benefit from an annual compensation supplement of 1,250 euros.

“We must do everything to help students and support teachers”

Reputed to be a good expert on the education system and labeled a "left-wing rector" during her time in the academies of Limoges and Toulouse - she resigned against the cuts in teaching positions under Nicolas Sarkozy - the former Minister of Justice also used to clear mines of the first attacks coming from right-wing oppositions.

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Pinned for old criticisms made against the uniform at school, she qualified her remarks by judging that the experiment launched by the executive could be “a way to help students” and “avoid discrimination”. “We must therefore do everything to help students and support teachers to obtain better academic results. I am fully committed to this mission which is that of the President of the Republic,” she added.

On the establishment of level groups in middle school, a measure of the so-called "shock of knowledge" driven by Gabriel Attal but which arouses strong rejection in the educational community, Nicole Belloubet limited herself to affirming her wish "to enter into a serious and sustained dialogue" with the unions.