Reports of“serious incidents” in French public schools, middle and high schools, mainly verbal and physical violence, increased over the year 2022-2023 compared to the previous year, according to statistics from the Ministry of National Education.
According to one official note available online Friday February 23, “the heads of secondary schools [collèges, lycées] reported an average of 13.7 serious incidents per 1,000 students” in 2022-2023, compared to 12.3 the previous year. Three-quarters of these incidents are reported to the college, a fairly stable figure compared to previous years. The figure for reports for second degree 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 reaches 4.6 serious incidents per 1,000 students in 2022-2023 compared to 3.0 the previous year, according to this document. This rate has been constantly increasing in recent years since it was 2.8 in 2020-2021 and 2.4 in 2018-2019 (there is no figure for 2019-2020, a year marked by confinement) . Note that, in public schools, if students are involved as authors six times out of ten, families are involved in “30% of cases”however, raises the note for 2022-2023.
Verbal violence is the majority
These “serious incidents” cover very different events (attacks on secularism, carrying bladed weapons, 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. Physical violence “represent 40% of the total in schools” but “are less important 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, in 2022-2023, 8% of incidents compared to 4% the previous year.