In an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, the minister also expressed the wish to “increase the volume of hours devoted to secularism and the values of the Republic”.
The Minister of National Education Anne Genetet announced a “very clear” drop in the number of “attacks on secularism” in educational establishments at the start of the 2024 school year, compared to the previous year, in an interview with La Tribune Sunday.
In September 2023, the month when the ban on the abaya came into force, “there were a total of 838 incidents of attacks on secularism in schools, colleges and high schools. In September 2024, it was 110: the decline is very clear”, she detailed, while Sunday marks the first anniversary of the assassination of French teacher Dominique Bernard in Arras.
The minister, alongside other members of the government, will participate this Sunday, October 13 in this city in a ceremony in tribute to this teacher killed with several stab wounds by a former student, on file for Islamist radicalization.
Increase in hours “devoted to secularism”
Even if “secularism is threatened” and has “enemies”, the minister welcomes that “training in the issues of secularism (…) is being deployed more and more: in the 2023-2024 school year alone, this 267,000 ministry agents have been trained.
She also wishes to “increase the volume of hours devoted to secularism and the values of the Republic (36 hours today)” in the initial training of teachers, ensuring that this is “a demand from the field”.
Why did the government decide to ban the abaya?
Asked about the teacher slapped by a student to whom she had asked to remove the veil, at the start of the week, in Tourcoing (North), the minister confirms the sending of “human reinforcements” to the high school “to restore a serene school climate”.
“From now on, a threatened professor obtains functional protection in 100% of cases. Four thousand ministry agents benefited from it last year,” she underlines.
But she also wants to “modify the law so that the National Education institution can file a complaint for its agent, which would strengthen the protection that we owe to our teachers”.
Monday, December 13, a minute of silence will be observed in middle and high schools across France in tribute to Dominique Bernard and Samuel Paty, history and geography teacher murdered by a young radicalized Islamist on October 16, 2020, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines).
