Senate proposals to better protect teachers

A senatorial commission of inquiry presented a report on Wednesday which makes recommendations to strengthen respect for secularism in schools. For senators, the State must do more to help, support and train teachers.

She is the sister of Samuel Paty, the teacher murdered in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine in October 2020 by an Islamist terrorist, who addressed the Senate in May 2023. She requested the creation of a commission on “pressures and threats” of which teachers are sometimes victims within establishments. We remember that before being killed, his brother had been the victim of slander from a student and harassment from fundamentalist activists.

After six months of work, hit by the assassination in Arras of another teacher, Dominique Bernard, the senators drew up an alarming observation, Wednesday March 6, in their report. Incidents are increasing, teachers were recently targeted in Angoulême, in Yvelines or in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. And faced with these tensions, they suffer from a “terrible loneliness”. The State must therefore help them more, this is the central theme of this report.

Protect teachers, improve their training to help them deal with challenges to their teaching, but also limit the increasingly influential presence of certain parents within establishments. Or even better, support teachers so that incidents are systematically reported and dealt with. This was already the commitment of the former Minister of Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, who wanted to put an end to the reflex of “no waves” within the educational institution. During his brief visit to rue de Grenelle, Gabriel Attal displayed the same objective which had pushed him to ban the wearing of the abaya “at the request of teachers”, he repeated. And this is why the President of the Senate, Gérard Larcher, is asking the government to take up the conclusions of this report.

Expand the ban on wearing religious symbols

But the senators want to go further than the government. Firstly to better instill secularism in young teachers who abandon this imperative. And, then 20 years after the 2004 law, they want to extend the ban on the wearing of ostentatious religious symbols “to any activity organized by the educational institution”, including outside of school time, for example, an awards ceremony, an orientation forum or an evening school trip. A proposal which should quickly reignite the controversy once the wearing of religious symbols, prohibited at school, is authorized outside, in public spaces.