A report published by the French Parliament on July 2 has not only shed light on disturbing cases of abuse, but has also revived a prolonged national debate about the balance between state supervision and freedom of education.
The report It is the result of a five -month investigation into violence in the school system and proposes a series of measures to improve the protection of minors. However, its fixation in private Catholic institutions with state contract has raised concern about possible political biases and the future of educational pluralism in France.
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The investigation was led by parliamentarians Violette Spillet, of the centrist Renaissance party of President Emmanuel Macron, and Paul Vannier, of the French France Insumisa (LFI).
While the report formally addresses all kinds of schools, much of its attention focuses on private Catholic institutions with state contract, especially those with boarding school.
A structural dysfunction
The Investigative Commission was created after the revelations of abuse in Notre-Dame de Bétharram, a Catholic boarding school in the Atlantic Pyrenees (southwest of France). The case, which covered several decades, served as a catalyst for national reflection. Prime Minister François Bayrou, former Minister of Education who had sent his children to school, was called to declare.
The report cites the Bétharram school as a key case, where priests, teachers and personnel are accused of having committed serious physical and sexual abuse between 1957 and 2004.
The victims described acts of “an unprecedented gravity, of absolute sadism.” Legislators described the “Classic Example” College of the structural dysfunction of the State and their inability to prevent abuses, warning that similar deficiencies persist today.
In more general terms, the report denounces continuous violence in public and private schools and cites decades of insufficient protection measures. The president of the commission, Fatiha Keloua hashi, described the investigation as a “deep analysis of the unthinkable”, which reveals systematic silence and institutional failure. Documents more than 270 affected schools and at least 80 groups of victims throughout the country.
The report also indicated cultural and religious factors that could have contributed to institutional silence in some schools, including rigid hierarchical structures and the reluctance to question authority.
The Commission discovered that sanctioned teachers could sometimes have been discreetly reallocated. He also highlighted the absence of national data on cases of abuse and discrepancies in the reports: a national survey estimated 7,000 cases of sexual violence per year, but only 280 were officially recorded in 2023-2024.
In short, the report concludes that the Ministry of Education still lacks effective tools to identify and address abuse and demand comprehensive structural reforms.
Among the most outstanding recommendations of the report is to expand the prescription period to denounce abuse, strengthen the protection of complainants and establish a new independent complaint body called “Signal Édu”. It also requests to create a National Compensation Fund for victims.
Other proposals are to increase the frequency of inspections, particularly in boarding schools (annually in primary and at least every three years in high school), and raise professional secrecy in cases of abuse of children under 15, even in the context of religious confession.
This last proposal, already included in the 2021 ciase report On sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, it generates concern in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which has systematically reaffirmed the inviolability of the secret of confession.
The report also recommends that private institutions with state contract are more directly submitted to the supervision of the General Directorate of the Ministry of Education and proposes to reevaluate the role of the Secretariat of Catholic Education (SGEC), which supervises more than 7200 schools.
Catholic school response
Philippe Delore, general secretary of the SGEC, who was the subject of intense scrutiny by the coponent Paul Vannier, who repeatedly questioned his legitimacy and accused her of obstructing the supervision, responded with caution to the report.
He recognized the usefulness of the report to bring to light the abuses and foster surveillance, but expressed concern about what he considers attempts to erode the distinctive mission of Catholic education.
“School life in our establishments does not seek to be exactly the same as in public schools, since we enjoy a certain freedom of organization,” he said during an audience on April 7 before the Cultural Affairs and Education Commission.
During a press conference on June 19, he said that the SGEC had already committed to verifying the criminal records of all non -teaching staff – about 80,000 people – long before the publication of the report.
In addition, the SGEC launched in May the “high to violence” campaign to raise awareness, improve prevention strategies and strengthen the commitment of Catholic educational institutions with student security.
The emphasis of the report on Catholic schools has generated debate, since critics recognize the severity of documented abuses, but also question whether this approach could suggest an exclusive systemic failure of Catholic education, although there are similar problems in the educational landscape in general.
In an analysis published in Le Figaro, the journalist specialized in education Caroline Beyer wrote that the report marks “a political sequence especially” with Catholic education in the sight, and questioned whether the recommendations would generate significant changes or respond to ideological motives.
His observation expressed broader concerns: although the report raises crucial issues, it runs the risk of becoming a tool to polarize debates about the role of confessional schools in French society.
These doubts about the impartiality of the document have been reinforced by the fact that Vannier was already author, in 2024, of a very critical report on the financing of Catholic schools.
The former Minister of Higher Education, Patrick Hetzel, also accused the parliamentarian of using research to promote an ideological agenda aimed at undermining the law I would debr from 1959, which guarantees state support for private schools with contract. “With him, LFI wants to revive the school war,” Hetzel told Le Figaro, referring to historical tensions between secular education and confessional in France.
Although Violette Spillegout has insisted that his work was not guided by dogmas, but for the testimony of the victims and the desire to ensure that no child, in any type of school, would be unprotected, the perception of disproportionate attention to Catholic institutions remains a point of controversy.
The report is published in the midst of greater efforts of the French government to expand control over education. In 2021, the administration of President Macron received criticism for proposing the prohibition of home education, apparently to combat Islamic radicalization. Although it was softened before approval, the bill reflected a change towards greater state control over education.
The publication of the report also coincided with a renewed approach to the Stanislas School of Paris, a prestigious Catholic institution investigated for alleged breach of the National Curriculum of Sexual Education, as well as by a “homophobic and sexist drift”, and for its new courses of Christian culture.
Although an inspection of 2023 did not confirm systematic discrimination, the Ministry of Education has indicated a narrower follow -up.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.
Solène Tadié
Correspondent in Europe of the National Catholic Register. He is Franco-Suziza and worked at the L’Osservatore Romano in 2015. He has a degree in Philosophy of the Pontifical University of Santo Tomás de Aquino.