Teen stabs teacher in France, leaving the 60-year-old woman in critical condition

Municipal police officers stand at the entrance of La Guicharde secondary school in Sanary-sur-Mer, south-eastern France, following the stabbing of a teacher by a student. A 60-year-old teacher was seriously injured. Photo / Miguel Medina, AFP

A 14-year-old school student stabbed an art teacher in southern France today, leaving the 60-year-old in critical condition, a prosecutor said.

The pupil stabbed the teacher at least three times and was subsequently arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, said Raphael Balland, the public prosecutor in the southern city of Toulon.

There were no known “religious or political connotations” at this stage, said Balland.

“All we know is that there had been tensions with this teacher recently, and that he was angry with her,” the prosecutor added during a press briefing.

France’s education minister, Edouard Geffray, headed to La Guicharde secondary school, where the stabbing took place, in the town of Sanary-sur-Mer.

“My thoughts immediately go out to the victim, her family and the entire educational community, whose deep shock I share,” he wrote on X.

President Emmanuel Macron was being kept up-to-date on the teacher’s condition, presidential aides said.

France has seen a series of incidents in which pupils have attacked teachers or other schoolchildren.

A 14-year-old schoolboy was last year charged with the murder of a teaching assistant after allegedly stabbing her to death in June.

He attacked the 31-year-old, a mother of a young boy, during a bag search in the eastern town of Nogent.

In a separate case, a student in April killed a girl and wounded several other pupils in a stabbing spree in the western city of Nantes.

Many educators said they often thought of a geography and history teacher, Samuel Paty, who was decapitated in 2020 by a radicalised young man after having shown his class caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

-Agence France-Presse