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POLICE

Parents take teachers hostage in French school

A group of parents have a taken a school headmistress and several teachers hostage in the town of Berre l’Etang in the south of France. The parents want one of the teachers fired.

Published: 7 December 2011 10:50 CET
Updated: 7 December 2011 15:25 CET

“We are very worried that the pupils are falling behind in school. We think our children are in danger. That’s why we have decided to hold the headmistress and a couple of teachers hostage. We want things to change,” said Christophe Planes, one of the parents, daily Le Figaro reports.

The fifteen adults occupying the school and holding several people hostage said they want the teacher in charge of their nine-year-old children to be fired.

The headmistress said relations with the teacher, who is in his first year of teaching, have been difficult. He is in charge of CM1 pupils (ages 9-10) in the Catholic school Notre-Dame de Caderot in Berre l’Etang.

The parents sid they are aware they risk legal action but insist their children have been “held hostage for several months”.

Local education authorities have agreed to transfer the teacher to another school on Wednesday. The parents however said they want a written document promising his transfer.

Police visited the school on Monday to assess the situation but did not intervene.

EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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