A 14-year-old boy was arrested on Tuesday following the fatal stabbing of a female education assistant at a middle school in northeastern France.
In the latest horrific attack to strike French schools, a 31-year-old supervisor was stabbed to death during a bag check outside the Françoise Dolto middle school in the commune of Nogent in the northeastern department of Haute-Marne.
According to Le Figaro, the suspected attacker, a 14-year-old boy who attended the school, was not previously known to security services, and the motive for the fatal attack remains unknown.
An officer of the local gendarmerie was also slightly injured during the attack as he attempted to apprehend the suspect knifeman.
The law enforcement force was present at the school as a part of a broader effort across France to check the bags of schoolchildren for knives and other weapons following the killing of a 17-year-old in March outside of a high school in Essonne.
Following another knife attack in April, which left one dead and three injured at a Nantes high school, Prime Minister François Bayrou announced “an intensification of controls put in place around and within educational establishments.”
Between March 26 and May 26, 186 blades were seized from students, 32 of whom were taken into custody, amid around 6,000 random bag checks at schools across the country.
French gendarmes control the access to a secondary school after a 31-year-old teaching assistant was stabbed with a knife by a 15-year-old pupil during a bag search in Nogent, eastern France, on June 10, 2025. (Photo by Jean-Christophe VERHAEGEN / AFP) (Photo by JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Commenting on the latest attack, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen remarked: “Not a week goes by without a tragedy striking schools. The desacralization of life, the trivialization of extreme violence, encouraged by the apathy of public authorities to put an end to it, and the explosion in the carrying of bladed weapons—the French people are fed up and await a firm, implacable, and determined political response to the scourge of juvenile violence.
“Our thoughts go out to the family of this supervisor and to the teaching community, once again devastated by this daily violence.”
For his part, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “While watching over our children in Nogent, an educational assistant lost her life, the victim of a senseless wave of violence. We all stand with her family, her loved ones, her colleagues and the entire educational community.
“The nation is in mourning, and the government is mobilised to reduce crime.”
However, President Macron faced criticism over comments made over the weekend denouncing the populist right and the media for “brainwashing” the public about the “invasion of the country and the latest news items” rather than focusing on issues like climate change.
National Rally president Jordan Bardella retorted: “The French are suffering both violence from below and contempt from above: we can no longer tolerate this unbearable alliance of savagery on the ground and denial at the head of the State.”
