3.4 million middle school students will be affected by this measure, before the implementation of additional measures at the start of the school year.
One hour of awareness on the theme bullying and social media will be organized in the 7,000 colleges of France in the week of June 12 to 16, 2023, announced Sunday June 11 the Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye. 3.4 million college students will be affected by this measure.
The government is trying to find the parade to better fight against school bullying which is growing with the use of social networks. Pap Ndiaye received on Monday the mother of Lindsay, this 13-year-old girl who committed suicide on May 12 after being the victim of harassment in her college in Vendin-le-Vieil (Pas-de-Calais). After this tragedy, Pap Ndiaye recognized a “collective failure”. More recently, seven students from a college in Castres were summoned by the courts, after the complaint on Wednesday by the mother of a schoolgirl for school harassment.
The Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, and the Minister of Education, Pap Ndiaye, wish “grow in power” against this “scourge” Who “destroyed the daily lives of thousands of young students in France”. They claim that the fight against bullying “will be the absolute priority for the start of the 2023 school year”.
“Fear must change sides”
The Minister of Education will bring together Tuesday, June 13 by videoconference, in particular the 14,000 heads of establishments, as well as the inspectors of National Education (IEN), the secretaries general of academies and the rectors, in order to “to remind them of all the levers at their disposal” and of “collect their feedback from the field”. On June 29, it will be the turn of academic officials to be brought together by the Ministry “in order to recall the procedures to be followed and the new measures which will have to be implemented”.
At the same time, consultations have been organised, since Friday and until Monday 12 June, with the trade unions, the main parent-teacher federations, the president of the Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (ARCOM) and the leaders of Meta France (Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp) and TikTok.
Several associations fighting against school bullying say in concert that “fear must change sides”. The rules will therefore change as soon as the next school year begins in the first degree, announced Minister Pap Ndiaye on Tuesday June 6. The harasser and no longer the harassed pupil may be educated in another school. “In concrete terms, the academic director of the national education services will now be able to automatically change a bullying elementary school pupil, with the agreement of the mayor or mayors concerned”, explains the ministry. In addition, it will now be mandatory to initiate disciplinary proceedings against the perpetrators of harassment.
More back-to-school measures
Other measures will be put in place from the start of the next school year: the appointment of an adult bullying referent in each establishment, an increase in the subsidy paid by the ministry to associations which manage the emergency numbers against harassment, 3018 and 3020. In September, 100% of schools, colleges and high schools will be involved in the “pHARe” anti-harassment program, a prevention system that makes it possible to detect cases in certain colleges.
In addition, the Minister of National Education and Youth has instructed the heads of establishments “to report the worrying facts to the prosecutors” on the basis of article 40 of the code of criminal procedure, which imposes the obligation, “for any constituted authority, any public officer or civil servant, in the exercise of their functions” to report crimes or misdemeanors of which he is aware.