At the heart of the next school year, a major change will affect all classes in France: the annual questionnaire on school bullying, completed in November, will include questions on sexist and sexual violence. The Minister of National Education, Édouard Geffray, announces that “From the main section of kindergarten to final year, 10 million students will be questioned about what they may have had to endure“.
To justify this mass consultation, Édouard Geffray recalls that “one child in 10 is a victim of sexual violence in France” and warns that “The results risk being seismic, because the phenomenon is massive.” He emphasizes that “National Education is the first to report violence against minors“, with 88,000 worrying reports issued last year for sexual violence or parental failings, against a backdrop of scandals in Parisian after-school activities in the fall of 2025 where dozens of leaders were suspended.
How will Édouard Geffray’s questionnaire on sexual violence work?
Concretely, this new block of questions will be added to the
anonymous questionnaire already used against harassment. “This questionnaire will be anonymous initially, but they will have the option to leave their names if they wish to meet a trusted adult“, specifies Édouard Geffray. The content must be developed”with school staff, parent-teacher associations and a committee of experts including child psychiatrists“, in order to take into account the age and level of understanding of the students.
Leaving your name will open the possibility of an individual interview with a trusted adult within the school or college. For Édouard Geffray, the issue is clear: thanks to this systematic passage of the form, it is a question of reaching each student, at least once a year. “The idea is to have a form of universal coverage for the detection of sexual and gender-based violence.“, he explains in the regional press.
Sexual violence: what the questionnaire changes in National Education
Beyond identification, this questionnaire must also produce more detailed data on the sexual violence
suffered in a school or family environment. Today, the 88,000 worrying reports from schools cover very diverse situations, from sexual violence to parental failures, without always distinguishing between what happened inside or outside the establishment. By systematically questioning 10 million students, National Education hopes to better situate this violence and organize the response.
Questionnaire on sexual violence: the alert from the L’Enfant Bleu association
So that the tool is not purely statistical, you still need to have the resources to respond to confidences. President of the L’Enfant Bleu association, Isabelle Debré warns: “If it remains anonymous, it risks being a double punishment for the victim, because he will speak out and nothing happens behind it. A child who talks about sexual violence must be accompanied, otherwise he feels abandoned and that is dangerous.“. She calls for “sustainable human resources” and personnel trained to welcome this word.