A 15-year-old teenager, who had reported acts of school harassment, committed suicide on Tuesday in the Paris region. While this phenomenon has already been made a priority this year, the new Minister of Education, Gabriel Attal, has indicated that new measures will be announced.
Only two days after the resumption of classes, the suicide of a young teenager of 15 years Wednesday, September 6 in Poissy, near Paris, comes to mourn the start of the school year. Early Tuesday evening, emergency services intervened for a 15-year-old boy found hanged at his home. After unsuccessful resuscitation attempts, the teenager was pronounced deceased. The teenager was educated last year in third preparatory trades at the professional high school of trades Adrienne-Bolland, in the Yvelines.
Justice calls for caution on the causes of the passage to the act while the National Education has launched an internal investigation.
“ We are not up to it »
” The suicide of a young boy is always a drama difficult to explain. There are obviously various factors “, declared the Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal during a speech in the courtyard of the ministry. But ” every drama is one drama too many, which reminds us that we are still not up to the task “, added the minister, who must announce an interdepartmental plan to fight against harassment by the end of September.
Already initiated by the former Minister of Education Pap Ndiaye, the fight against school bullying intensified after Lindsay’s death, 13, in the north of France, who shed light on this phenomenon. Bullying at school, which affects one in ten students, has been made a top government priority for the 2023-2024 school year.
Gabriel Attal has decided to launch an administrative investigation to make the ” light » on the facts of school harassment of which this boy was the victim, but also on the management of this affair by the services of National Education. ” These are obviously not people that I want to implicate, it is the response of the National Education institution to the urgency of school bullying that we must continue to profoundly change. “, he explained.
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” In December 2022, the harassment of the young boy had been reported. An appointment had been organized in the establishment. There were reports of repeated bullying and insults by several students named “, recounted the Minister of Education. “ In March 2023, the parents were received by the establishment. The students involved were also received, and their parents were contacted. An exchange of letters also took place in April between the family and the school institution on the situation of the young boy, the family denouncing, in this letter, the absence of sufficient measures taken in the face of this situation. “, he added. The father had filed a handrail for harassment in April at the Poissy police station, but did not wish to file a complaint, we learned from a police source.
The Minister clarified that according to the establishment, the teenager had ” benefited from regular monitoring by the CPE, until the end of the school year ” and that'” a point was made with the father of this young boy at the end of the school year. The teenager had been educated since this start of the school year in another establishment in Paris.
One million children affected
” I don’t know if it was school bullying that killed this teenager today, all we know is that he was indeed the victim of school bullying last year, and that this bullying l led to a change of school, reacted Laurent Boyet, founder of the association Les Papillons, at the microphone of Lucie Bouteloupreminding : ” It is difficult to make society aware that school bullying is a scourge that affects one million children out of the twelve million children who go to school, and it is a scourge that, in the end, kills our children . »
The minister’s attitude was welcomed by victims’ associations. “ We feel in Gabriel Attal a real will since he still spoke about the problem of school bullying outside the news, Gabriel Attal has always talked about school bullying since he took office, so we have this feeling that he has a real desire to do something to fight against this scourge, and we simply hope that our disappointments will not live up to our hopes, underlined Laurent Boyet. So we wait, we wait for what he is going to tell us. »
“ The fact that he spoke, that he called the family, for me, it’s a strong sign all the same, also greetede Nora Fraisse, founder of the association Marion the outstretched hand. Afterwards, we need to know how we are going to be able to support families and students a little more, and have additional means so that this does not happen again. Because we really have more and more reports of families who are distraught with the harassment that is rampant, unfortunately from an early age in our establishments. So I hope that the plan will announce human resources, financial resources, really up to the million children who suffer each year. Families must have appropriate and rapid responses, and justice must follow. »
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Since this summer, new measures have been taken to combat school bullying. According to a decree published in mid-August, a student responsible for school bullying can now be transferred to another school, avoiding imposing this change on the victim. It is also planned to be able to sanction a perpetrator of cyberbullying against a student from another establishment. Gabriel Attal has already assured that he wants a ” zero tolerance against all forms of harassment “.
From this start of the school year, a referent on harassment “ in each establishment must be created. Schools should also report systematically » harassment cases to prosecutors.
The Phare anti-bullying program, set up in 2019 and tested for two years in six academies, was generalized at the start of the 2022 academic year in all schools and colleges. According to the Ministry of Education, 91% of colleges and 64% of schools are now registered in this system.
Brigitte Macron will visit the teenager’s family on Thursday, government spokesman Olivier Véran announced.
(And with AFP)