In Haute-Saône, a 37-year-old father has been fined for letting his 14-year-old son play truant, Le Figaro learned from the Vesoul prosecutor's office, confirming information from L'Est Républicain. "The initial acts of refusal to enrol a school-age child in an educational establishment despite formal notice have been reclassified as facts, without legitimate reason, of the obligation to attend school by the child's guardian despite an administrative warning," the prosecutor's office said.
Reports from the institution and the rectorate
Supposed to follow the 4th grade program, the teenager would have missed no less than 96 days of classes between April 2022 and June 2023, leading his school in Dampierre-sur-Salon, then the rectorate, to report these repeated absences to the child's family by sending numerous letters, according to L'Est Républicain. Faced with the family's silence, the rectorate ended up escalating the problem to the public prosecutor of Haute-Saône.
In June 2023, the father ended up being interrogated by the gendarmes, to whom he explained that his son no longer wanted to go to school, but refused to change schools so as not to leave his friends... So he chose to let his son miss class.
School being compulsory in France for all until the age of 16, the father was fined 600 euros, including 300 suspended, said the judicial court of Vesoul. However, he did not bother to attend the hearing, according to L'Est Républicain. The young boy eventually went back to school: he now attends a rural family home (MFR).