Louise Sallé / Photo credit: NICOLAS GUYONNET / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 11:11 a.m., March 7, 2024

The Senate inquiry commission made a series of 38 recommendations to address violence against teachers.

With one objective: to ensure that secularism is respected by students, but also by their parents.

For senators, the wearing of religious symbols must be prohibited, including outside school hours.

Faced with violence against teachers inside schools, the senatorial commission of inquiry, created after the death of Samuel Paty, made a series of 38 recommendations.

Objective: to restore the authority of the teacher, and this requires strict respect for secularism.

Because the questioning of this principle is at the origin of the violence to which teachers are victims.

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For senators, we must ban all gray areas on the ban on the wearing of religious symbols, by applying this rule during outings planned outside school hours, such as in the evening to the theater.

“When we are supervised by our teacher and as part of a school activity, we must respect the principle of secularism. It is a very, very simple rule,” explains François Noël Buffet, LR senator and rapporteur.

Problems of “disputes” from parents

The authority of the teacher and the content of his lessons must be respected by the students but also by their parents.

“In the context of an outing or a choice or a statement made, more and more examples have been cited of protests from parents,” explains Laurent Lafon, senator from the centrist Union, also rapporteur.

“We are asking parents to sign a charter to remind them that teaching cannot be disputed. In short, rules which may seem obvious but which clearly are not so for everyone.”

For threatened teachers, after a questioning of secularism, the report finally recommends systematic functional protection, that is to say legal and psychological assistance, as well as a strengthening of links between the prosecution and establishments to faster legal processing. 

This report was not limited to acts of violence linked to secularism.

More generally, for example, for disruptive or poly-excluded students, senators are calling for a strengthening of criminal sanctions as well as the creation of a structure to accommodate them.