🚨 Violence at school: what do children say? Discover the DEPP survey to better understand their experiences, enrich your team discussions, and inform your reflections on prevention and listening to students.
At school, 83% of CE2-CM1-CM2 students report at least one incident. Among the victims, 63% do not talk to anyone about it. The DEPP survey sheds light on violence and the voices of children that need to be heard.
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1️⃣ SUMMARY
Since 2011, the DEPP has regularly conducted national surveys on school climate and victimisation (p. 1). In spring 2025, 11,200 CE2-CM1-CM2 students from public and private contract schools responded to the questionnaire, under the supervision of mobile security teams (EMS) (p. 1). The scope covers France excluding Mayotte (figure 1, p. 2). Students are asked about incidents experienced at school or on the way to school since the beginning of the school year (p. 1). The report details material, verbal or psychological and physical harm (figure 1, p. 2), sexual violence (p. 2), cyber violence and discriminatory incidents (p. 3), then the school experiences of repeatedly victimised students and their reactions (p. 4). The results on school climate are the subject of another report, Information Note No. 26.45 (p. 1).
2️⃣ WHAT TO REMEMBER
1️⃣ Observation – younger students are more exposed. The most frequently reported incidents are ostracism (48%), insults and mockery (43%), intentional shoving (38%), unpleasant nicknames (37%) and participation in a fight (37%). Year 3 students are more affected by many incidents, particularly sexual violence, shoving and hitting: 45% report having been intentionally shoved, compared to 38% in Year 4 and 32% in Year 5. However, this difference by level is not systematically observed: the note indicates that Year 3 students are as affected by cyberviolence as those in Year 4 and Year 5 (p. 1-3, figure 1).
2️⃣ Observation – sexual violence. 34% of students are victims of at least one form of sexual violence addressed in the questionnaire, 42% in Year 3 (p. 2). 22% have been uncomfortable with someone who was looking at them or wanted to look at them in the school toilets; 22% report that someone tried to kiss, touch or caress them without their consent, “which may constitute sexual violence” (p. 2). At school, girls and boys report these incidents in the same proportions (p. 2).
3️⃣ Observation – the voices of victims. Among students reporting having experienced at least one incident of violence during the school year, 37% talked to someone and 63% did not talk to anyone. Among those who confided, the most frequently mentioned listeners are parents (60%), the teacher (54%) and friends (41%). Among those who did not talk to anyone, 56% believe that the problem was not serious and 11% did not know who to turn to (p. 4, figure 5).
3️⃣ TO ACT
The document is a statistical note. No action explicitly planned or requested by the document has been identified. The paths below only relate to existing tools explicitly mentioned.
1️⃣ Case 2 – explicitly mentioned existing tool. The figures and supplementary data are available at education.gouv.fr/depp (p. 4). They detail in particular the results by gender, level and sector (figures “online” mentioned p. 2-4). Health Practices Suggestion: rely on this national data to introduce a team exchange session, without transposing it to a specific school.
2️⃣ Case 2 – explicitly mentioned existing tool. The Information Note No. 26.45 presents the main results on the school climate in schools from the students' perspective (p. 1). Health Practices Suggestion: read it as a complement, the note 26.46 being focused on reported violence.
3️⃣ Case 2 – explicitly mentioned existing tool. The numbers 3018, 119 and 112 appear in figure 5, as response category “On the Internet or to a phone number”; 2% of students who spoke addressed this type of resource (p. 4). The document does not describe these services. Health Practices Suggestion: check that these numbers are known and displayed in places frequented by children.
4️⃣ 3 PRACTICAL QUESTIONS
1️⃣ Can these results be used for a school or an academy? No. The survey is representative at the national level only; no results can be extracted at the level of academies or institutions (data file, tab “Information”).
2️⃣ Can we compare with the 2021 survey ? Only for CM1-CM2 students, with CE2 being integrated for the first time (p. 1). Some questions were different or not asked in 2021 (figure 1 and notes, p. 2).
3️⃣ Do repeatedly victimised students more often feel afraid ? Yes. 39 % of students who are often victims of more than six distinct incidents report feeling often or very often afraid at school or on the way there, compared to 1 % of non- victims (p. 4, figure 4).
5️⃣ TO GO FURTHER
2️⃣ External resource : eduscol, "Acting against sexist and sexual violence against children ", Ministry of National Education, page dated October 2026. It presents resources for staff, some of which are for primary education (external source). eduscol.education.gouv.fr/7111 – consulted on 27 October 2026.
6️⃣ #️⃣ HASHTAGS
#healthpractices #SchoolClimate #Victimisation #PrimarySchool #SexualViolence #Cyberviolence #Children'sVoices #DEPP
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