It is rare for an administrative report to scandalize… the institution that commissioned it. However, this is indeed the case of the confidential text delivered in December 2023, by eight senior officials, concerning the schooling of radicalized students. “Not up to the challenge… This demonstrates, unfortunately, a lack of understanding of what the very powerful process of radicalization is,” says for example this senior official who is very familiar with the matter.
This confidential report, which L’Express was able to consult, is signed by general inspectors of National Education, Interior and Justice… including the former chief of staff of a former minister of Emmanuel Macron . He proposes adapting the system of individualized reception projects (PAI), until now reserved for children and adolescents in school with health problems, to students tempted by jihadist ideology. The authors also speak out against the placement of these students in dedicated establishments with boarding facilities, under the pretext that “leaving them outside of school would be counterproductive both in terms of education and security” and likely to fuel “the risk of creating a cluster of radicalized individuals. “Problems with the behavior of young people would also be anticipated” and “the safety of people working there could not be guaranteed” it is added.
These conclusions sound like a disavowal of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. On October 19, a week after the Arras attack which cost the life of Professor Dominique Bernard, the then Minister of National Education announced that he was “working on measures” that would allow students to be “exited”. radicalized from educational establishments. While affirming that he “deeply believes in the role of education in reducing radicalization”, the host of Rue de Grenelle recognized that “in certain situations, the level of recruitment in the family, and sometimes of associations which gravitate around, is such that we do not fight on equal terms”.
The stakes are high since more than 500 students are now believed to have entered into radicalization processes. And around 160 of them would be classified in what specialists call the “high end of the spectrum” and therefore considered potentially dangerous. Some minors, who have already committed the act and are the subject of criminal proceedings, are placed in closed educational centers but others – those who are being debated today – are educated in ordinary establishments without the teaching team is not necessarily informed.
Risk management
Since Gabriel Attal’s shock declaration, measures have been slow to come. On March 15, the new Minister of National Education Nicole Belloubet recently recognized the urgency of the matter and assured that she would speak “very quickly” about the “very precise measures” which will be taken. On February 26, she said that taking care of these students “in specific classes” within schools was currently being studied. “These students risk being considered by some classmates as outcasts or, conversely, as heroes by others who, following a logical process of rebellion specific to adolescence, could be tempted to follow the same path than them,” worries a specialist in the sector.
Specialized PAI, dedicated closed centers, specific classes… All these avenues currently under study represent a headache. “It’s very tense because the issue is explosive. We know well that there is no ideal solution. The whole challenge is to opt for the least bad one, which necessarily takes time,” says one internal source.
For Senator Laurent Lafon (Centrist Union) who, on March 6, presented the report of the commission of inquiry on the reporting and treatment of pressures, threats and attacks of which teachers are victims, the placement of radicalized students in dedicated centers is the best option. “It is not up to the educational establishment to organize itself according to the difficulties posed by certain young people. Its mission is to ensure a normal educational framework for all the others,” says the elected official. For Iannis Roder, director of the education observatory of the Jean-Jaurès Foundation, the only criterion that prevails is risk management. “Grouping together young people likely to act out overnight in small units is obviously less dangerous than leaving them in contact with several hundred students and their teachers,” explains the history and geography teacher.
The diversity of the profiles in question makes their management particularly complex. “There are gradations in these students who are suspected of radicalization,” insisted Nicole Belloubet on March 15. The response to be given will not be the same depending on whether we are dealing with a child who grows up in a family that is itself radicalized but whose behavior is not considered problematic; a teenager who withdraws into himself but who we learn watches endless beheading videos; or a young person who makes threats on social networks. Hence the importance of establishing a very detailed preliminary diagnosis, requiring a psychiatric analysis, but also that of radical Islam experts familiar with worrying signals. Depending on the degree of radicalization observed, the question would then arise whether or not to keep a student in his or her establishment. “For those who have really fallen apart, it will be very difficult to go back. There are no half-measures possible. To think that leaving them among other students will allow them to socialize and resolve everything is put your finger in the eye”, believes Iannis Roder.
“Any attempt is necessarily doomed to failure”
After the Arras attack, an audio recording was found in the terrorist’s phone: “Oh French people, people of cowardice and unbelievers. I was in your schools for years and years, I lived for years and years with you, for free […] You taught me what democracy and human rights are, and you pushed me towards hell.” Mohammed Mogouchkov was registered in the file of reports for the prevention of radicalization of a terrorist nature (FSPRT ) since February 2021 and had been the subject of two reports from his establishment. Which did not prevent the former student of Gambetta high school from taking action.
For Médéric Chapitaux, author of When Islamism penetrates sport, France would already have the necessary tools to support the hundred or so minors registered with the FSPRT. This former police officer recommends, in particular, using the relay class system. “These day units in which specialist teachers and educators from the Judicial Protection of Youth (PJJ) collaborate, have the enormous advantage of allowing appropriate care and monitoring of these young people while maintaining the link with the school system,” he explains.
But all of these avenues currently being explored by the government come up against the question of family acceptance. “Only the judge can force a minor to join a closed educational center or to comply with an educational measure. For others, nothing can be done without parental consent, not even the establishment of a dedicated PAI to radicalized students which is under discussion today”, recalls Jean-Pierre Obin, former inspector general of National Education and author of The teachers are afraid. School and secularism: investigation into the great renunciation (ed. of L’Observatoire). “From there, any attempt is necessarily doomed to failure,” he continues. The debate is lively between those for whom the notion of constraint, contrary to the principle of public freedoms, is not acceptable; and those for whom the urgency and seriousness of the situation require a change in the legislative framework. Will the former Minister of Justice, Nicole Belloubet, come out in favor of this last option? In their report, the general inspectors of National Education, Interior and Justice confirm that “the placement of the radicalized minor in a dedicated educational establishment cannot be imposed on his family”. “The legal developments to make coercion possible have not been assessed by the mission, which has not heard either the prosecutors’ offices or the children’s judges on this scenario,” they specify. A central point of the current debate.
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