It is a paradox: the government wanted to restrict home schooling to avoid separatist excesses. However, while the prior authorization regime (and no longer a simple declaration) is due to enter into force in September 2022, family education requests (IEF) have exploded since the start of the school year.
70,000 families affected
Our association had 200 members a few months ago, today we are 900
, advance Jean-Baptiste Maillard, general secretary of the association Liberté education. He estimates today at 70,000 nationally
the number of families practicing IEF, compared to 50,000 a year ago.
The media coverage of this very minor practice (62,000 children concerned according to the latest reports, for 12.3 million children in school), repeated confinements, deemed educationalally positive by some families, and the obligation of instruction from three years old, imposed since the start of the September 2019 school year, have, it seems, accelerated the phenomenon.
“Women in niqab …”
In his speech at Les Mureaux, Friday, October 2, 2020, Emmanuel Macron had mentioned the closure of underground Islamic schools: These children do not go to Cned [Centre national d’enseignement à distance]. Sometimes they don’t get any education. But they go to structures that are in no way declared. Children who arrive at 8 a.m. every day, who leave at 3 p.m., women in niqabs who welcome them. And when they are questioned, prayers, certain courses, this is their teaching.
How much ? Where ? And what links with family education? For months, associations and deputies have been demanding reports from the general direction of school education on the IEF. These have finally just been communicated to them. We learn that schools say fact
, that is to say the reunification of at least two families, are ultra-minority: five cases reported to justice in 2016-2017; six in 2018-2019. In addition, 59 children educated in families were considered in danger
in 2016-2017, i.e. 0.2% and 32 in 2018-2019, i.e. 0.09%.
No cases of separatism identified
But none of these cases is linked to any separatism. Not a line on a sectarian risk, no more concerning radicalization and even less on the ghosts of the Republic
, protests the association Children first.
As we have been saying from the start, there is nothing wrong with us
, abounds Jean-Baptiste Maillard, author de Home schooling: a fundamental freedom (Artège), which announces the filing of an appeal before the administrative courts and up to the European Court of Human Rights
.
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