“A child’s place is in school.” The conclusion is a priori obvious. However, in France, children in very precarious situations do not go to school. Youth “living in slums, squats or social hotels”, “unaccompanied minors”, “children of Travelers”… Their family situations are varied. How to get these “dropouts” from the school system? In a report presented on Wednesday, the LREM deputy for Haute-Garonne Sandrine Mörch, charged by the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, with a mission aimed at “identify the brakes” to the schooling of these children, proposes a series of measures. At the end of interviews with actors, in particular educational, from the academies of Créteil and Toulouse, the mission resulted in an inventory “incomplete” but which nevertheless has the merit of “give these invisibles a first visibility by recalling their existence and the difficulties they encounter”, explained the deputy on Wednesday during the presentation of the report to the Assembly.
Out-of-school children include several categories of the population, whose census is often complicated because they are, for the most part, from mobile families, without fixed accommodation. All have in common to be part of the 9 million individuals in precarious situations identified in France. Yes “the social system in its current state cannot prevent the causes of poverty”, according to the report, “School is the key to breaking this chain”. The urgency is to collect statistical data in order to better understand the phenomenon.
These young people aged 3 to 18 generally have unstable or precarious housing. Until 2020, proof of residence was required for school registration. An obligation to which families living in slums, homeless unaccompanied minors, children of travellers, or those forced into “forced nomadism”, moved from social hotel to social hotel, could not comply. As a result, many of them were refused registration by the town halls, despite their right to education. This was the case of Denisa. Arrived in France at the age of 5 with her parents and her brother, the little girl quickly expressed the wish to go to school. Her file is refused: she lives in a slum. “It took a whole year before having the necessary documents and being able to go to school, that is to say a whole year of dropping out of school”, she testifies, sixteen years later, in the report.
Lack of supervision
For the past two years, registration has been authorized on presentation of a sworn statement from the parents certifying the place of residence. A measure that is not always respected by municipal officials, most often through ignorance of the decree. In order to facilitate the reception of the children concerned, Sandrine Mörch recommends in particular to provide training on the great precariousness “so that agents can better understand these audiences, and vice versa”.
Other difficulties limit the access of these children to school and, once registered, it is often difficult for them to follow a continuous education. This is partly due to expulsions (which cause children to drop out of school for six months on average) or even the cost of transport and the distance between the place of residence and the school, when it comes to mobile individuals. . The report also notes the lack of extracurricular supervision, either because parents do not understand how the education system works or because their living conditions do not allow them to worry about it on a daily basis.
There are also many children who struggle to integrate and are victims of harassment. “The first time, I was happy to go. All the Roma children in the field were gathered in the same class, […] but there was a lot of racism from other children and some adults. It was hard, says Roxana, a resident of the Flambère slum in Toulouse. I was only in primary, I stopped when I went to college because I was afraid that there would be even more racism.
Collaborative method
To improve the situation of out-of-school children, the report insists on the need to unite social workers, associations and State services around a collaborative working method. A pooling of resources that would allow the implementation of solutions “inexpensive”, not requiring “no legislative change”.
Among the recommendations: compliance with the circular of January 25, 2018 on slums, which requires that a social assessment be carried out before eviction, so that it does not disrupt the schooling of children; improving access to the canteen, extracurricular and transport; the strengthening of UPE2A, these classes specifically dedicated to allophone children; and increasing the number of school mediators. Forty-five dedicated mediator positions are currently deployed, according to the interministerial delegation for accommodation and access to housing. They are an essential cog in the communication between the administrative agents and the families and would benefit from seeing their skills increase, according to the information report. It is now up to the government to take up these proposals.