The environment continues to deteriorate in schools. This is, in any case, the conclusion that emerges from reading the annual barometer of the Autonomous Lay Solidarity (ASL), an association that works for advice and legal protection of national education personnel. With more than 470,000 members, the ASL publishes each year a summary of litigation in which it supports officials who request it. The ASL opened 10,865 files in 2023-2024, compared to 10,149 the previous year, an increase of 7%.
The association opens files of two types. It offers “personalized legal information” when an educational agent has doubts about a professional situation, without necessarily posing a serious problem. The second category of files refers to “professional legal protection”: cases in which national educational agents run the risk of being involved or victims of a judicial situation, for which the ASL will request the assistance of a lawyer.
“Personalized legal information” files, which represent just over half of the total, increased by 10% in one year and refer mainly to conflicts (22.44% of files). “The number of conflict cases has stabilized after three years of sharp increases since 2020”the speakers write, “testimony of an extremely tense general situation that continued during the last school year.”
Among the situations for which national education personnel seek advice, cases of defamation (13%), verbal attacks (12%) and physical attacks (0.93%) increase slightly. But there are also many education professionals requesting simple ASL information: this makes up almost 18% of requests, compared to less than 2% the previous school year. This sharp increase also means that they are getting into the habit of seeking advice before the situation gets worse.
The most exposed school principals
Implicitly, the files opened by the ASL for requests for legal advice also show the school’s difficulties, reported by numerous teachers and families, in fulfilling the promises of inclusive schooling: “This year we once again observe that the issue of inclusion and students who exhibit behaviors incompatible with school expectations continues to be central in 32% of our files called “conflicts””we can read in the report.
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