Father jailed for six months over death threat to son's teacher in France

A French court has handed a six-month prison sentence to a man who threatened to kill his son's teacher in the village of Le Fauga, near Toulouse, home to around 2,600 people.

The sentence was delivered on Thursday following a fast-track hearing, six days after the incident occurred. The threat came after the father was called into the school for a discussion about his son's disruptive behaviour. According to Le Fauga Mayor Jean-Marie Puig, the boy had been sent to another class to calm down but continued misbehaving. The teacher in that class reportedly told him to stop acting like a bully. The father is then alleged to have waited for her outside the school and threatened to cut off her head if she had been a man.

The man later apologised, but a formal complaint was filed, and he appeared before the prosecutor in Toulouse on Thursday. The teacher has been granted official protection and has gone on sick leave. Her colleagues did not report to work on Monday in response to the incident.

French Education Minister Edouard Geffray said no teacher should be afraid to do their job, describing an attack on a teacher as an attack on the entire education system. Over the summer, the minister pushed through legislation aimed at protecting school staff from significant risks to their safety or health posed by a student's family member. Officials say this case marks one of the first applications of that new rule.

The decree also allows for a student to be transferred to another school when staff face significant risk and education authorities have intervened. It is thought the boy and his younger sister may now be moved to a school outside Le Fauga.

The incident has revived memories of the killing of teacher Samuel Paty six years ago in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, near Paris, who was murdered by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee.