Pap Ndiaye wants to make students more aware of “equality between girls and boys” or even “the notion of consent”. With this in mind, the Minister of Education announced on Tuesday “an ambitious national plan” for training staff in sex education at school.
This plan “will be deployed during the 2023-2024 school year”, announced the ministry, which specifies that it will be “organized in three levels”: “awareness of all staff, deepening for the staff taking charge of the sessions, training of pedagogical advisors”.
A program “adapted to each level”
The Minister has contacted the High Council for Programs to draw up “by November” and “for each level of education, a program proposal specifying the themes and concepts that will have to be addressed”. “Structured in cycles, this program will be adapted to each level in order to cover the three fields of sexuality education: biological, psycho-emotional and legal and social”, according to the ministry.
The proposals “must give a special place to equality between girls and boys, to the fight against all forms of discrimination linked to gender identity or real or supposed sexual orientation, as well as to the notion of consent”. , further specifies the ministry. The latter “will publish each year in June a survey on the implementation by establishments and schools of sex education”.
A “liaison committee” bringing together associations in the sector, parents of pupils and young people has also been created “in order to collect feedback from the field on the interventions provided in the establishments”.
Currently three sessions, but not often performed
According to the Education Code, pupils in schools, colleges and high schools must benefit from at least three annual sexuality education sessions, including awareness-raising on sexist and sexual violence. In practice, however, we are far from the mark, denounced in early March three associations – SOS Homophobia, Sidaction and Family Planning – for which these themes “remain neglected by the public authorities”.
The objective of at least three annual sessions “is obviously not achieved”, had also admitted in 2021 a report from the General Inspectorate of Education. According to an Ifop poll published in the first quarter, commissioned by the three associations and carried out among a thousand young people aged 15 to 24, 17% said they had never had any lessons on the question, and among the others, only a third said they had benefited from the three planned annual sessions.