France's Minister for Education has ordered all middle schools to hold an hour-long session on the scourge of bullying on social media, after two teenage victims took their own lives. The government has said the fight against bullying will be an "absolute priority" for the start of the 2023 academic year.
Education Minister Pap Ndiaye, who recently promised to step up the fight against cyberbullying in French schools, announced the awareness-raising sessions on Sunday.
"This hour will be an opportunity to show how social media can exacerbate the phenomenon of bullying", he said, underlining everyone had a responsibility in how such media was used.
Recent surveys suggest 10 percent of schoolkids in France are bullied at school, most often through social media.
Some 3.4 million pupils in France’s 7,000 middle schools are concerned by the anti-cyberbullying session.
The Education Ministry's initiative comes after two teenagers took their own lives.
Lucas, 13, hanged himself in January in eastern France. Prosecutors said he had been bullied at school for several months due to his homosexuality.
His mother told French media at the time that homophobic bullying had "triggered" his suicide.
The four secondary school pupils prosecuted over Lucas's suicide in January were found guilty of bullying on 5 June, but the juvenile court did not find a causal link between these acts and the 13-year-old's suicide.
Last month, 13-year-old Lindsay from northern France, also took her own life. She left a letter saying she had received insults and threats on social media from morning to night.
Her parents accused her school of ignoring their many complaints.
After meeting Lindsay's parents last week, Pap Ndiaye referred to a "collective failure", calling for social media networks to do more to police threats published on their platforms.
'Communications exercise'
The main headteachers' union, SNPDEN-Unsa, said the Education Ministry had given them insufficient time to organise the sessions and said it "smacked of improvisation".
The message has been "poorly received", said Bruno Bobkiezicz, the union’s secretary general.
"It doesn’t send out a good signal when this ministry is continually improvising. The signal is ‘do it this week, it’s the moment’. But it feels like a communications exercise.. and suggests we hadn’t done anything beforehand."
Acknowledging that the Education Ministry still had "some way to go" on the issue, Ndiaye has promised extra resources to fight bullying in schools.
An special adviser will be appointed in each school at the start of the new academic year, the ministry said in a statement online. The ministry will also increase funding for associations that manage the 3018 and 3020 helplines pupils in difficulty can call.
From September, the pHARe anti-bullying programme, aimed at detecting cases in middle schools before they get out of hand, will be extended to high schools.
Ndiaye also said it would be no longer be up to the victim of bullying to change schools, but the perpetrator.
It will also be mandatory to trigger disciplinary proceedings against perpetrators.
In November 2021, parliament agreed to criminalise school bullying. In severe cases, students or staff can face up to 10 years in prison. The law was adopted in February 2022.
