Reports of “serious incidents” in public and private public schools, middle and high schools, mainly verbal and physical violence, increased in 2022-2023 compared to the previous year, according to statistics from the Ministry of Education national.
According to an official note available online on Friday, “heads of secondary schools (middle schools, high schools, editor’s note) declared on average 13.7 serious incidents per 1000 students” in 2022-2023, compared to 12.3 the year former.
Three-quarters of these incidents are reported to the college, a fairly stable figure compared to previous years.
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The figure for reports for secondary education was 10.2 in 2020-2021 and 12.2 in 2018-2019, according to a previous report dating from November 2021. Concerning public schools (nursery, elementary, primary), the number of reports reached 4.6 serious incidents per 1000 students in 2022-2023 compared to 3.0 the previous year, according to this document.
A rate that has been constantly increasing in recent years since it was 2.8 in 2020-2021 and 2.4 in 2018-2019 (no figure for 2019-2020, a year marked by confinement).
Violation of secularism, carrying of bladed weapons, theft
Note that, in public schools, if students are involved as perpetrators six times out of ten, families are involved in “30% of cases”, notes the note for 2022/23.
These “serious incidents” cover very different events (attacks on secularism, carrying knives, theft, consumption of alcohol or drugs, etc.), but are primarily verbal violence: 43% of all reports in public schools and in public and private middle and high schools.
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Physical violence “represents 40% of the total in schools” but “is less significant in middle and high schools (24%)”, underlines the note.
The share of incidents motivated by racism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia or homophobia is also increasing significantly in middle and high schools, representing 8% of incidents in 2022/23 compared to 4% the previous year.