It is not a time for serenity in educational establishments. More than half of senior staff (58%) believe their relationships with parents have deteriorated in a few years. In 2013 they were 21%. One in four principals now believe that parents do not respect their authority. These are the main conclusions of the investigation carried out by Georges Fotinos, former director of inspection of the Ministry of National Education, commissioned by the union of school directors SNPDEN-UNSA and which has just been made public. The consultant asked the same questions, ten years apart, to the principals of 10,000 French secondary and higher schools. More than 1,200 of them responded.
Nearly 27% of principals now describe relationships with parents as average or mediocre, compared to 13% ten years earlier. On the contrary, 37% of respondents consider these links to be good or even excellent. In 2013 they were 59%. For Georges Fotinos, the “structural degradation” Relationships between school and parents reflect a “social evolution that segments French society and promotes individual values”.
This deterioration is illustrated in the increase in tensions. Almost nine out of ten senior staff members have had disagreements with parents during 2023. For 13% of them, these conflicts occur almost every week. All this while the school climate within middle and high schools is also changing, say the staff interviewed.
This deterioration causes a sharp increase in attacks (insults, threats or harassment) by parents towards management personnel. More than half of them (54%) received threats from a parent in 2023. This figure was 36% in 2013. Almost 3.5% of them were even victims of physical violence. It is the principals of universities outside priority education who notice the greatest deterioration in relationships with parents and those in priority education who identify the greatest number of threats.
More conflicts, less interests
In the opinion of principals, teachers are also affected by this growing mistrust, particularly female teachers, who make up the overwhelming majority of the profession. For one in five teachers, female teachers are less respected than their male counterparts. Only 9% made this observation ten years earlier.
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