Education Minister Edouard Geffray unveiled a new system on Sunday to combat school dropout. An automated alert will now be sent to school principals as soon as a student stops attending school without justification. This system aims to identify cases of school disengagement more quickly, which are often indicative of serious family or social difficulties. The stated objective is to reduce the number of children who fall through the cracks of the school system, estimated at several thousand each year in France.
Enhanced monitoring of school absences
The ministry aims to strengthen the monitoring of students subject to compulsory education, whether they attend school or are homeschooled. This measure comes amid stricter controls on homeschooling, which has been subject to prior authorization since 2021. Academic services will be able to cross-reference absence data with enrollment records to identify suspected cases. Principals will receive a notification as soon as a report is generated by the system.
A rollout is planned for the start of the school year.
This initiative is part of a broader effort to prevent disruptions in children's educational paths and guarantee the effective right to education. Child protection organizations generally welcome this type of system, but some families who homeschool see it as a risk of excessive monitoring. The government hopes for a gradual rollout of the system across the country by the start of the next school year.
Community
Comments
Comments are open, but protected against spam. Initial posts and comments containing links undergo manual review.
Be the first to comment on this article.