A man in Le Fauga, a village near Toulouse in south-western France, has been jailed for six months after threatening to kill his son's primary school teacher following a disciplinary incident. The case, dealt with via a fast-tracked hearing just six days after the threat was made, has alarmed French education officials and prompted one of the first uses of a new law designed to protect school staff from serious threats made by pupils' families.

The threat followed a meeting called after the man's son had been disruptive in class; a teacher who told the boy to stop "acting like a little bully" was later confronted by the father outside the school, who allegedly said he would have cut off her head had she been a man. The teacher has since been granted official protection and gone on sick leave, while colleagues stayed away from work in the aftermath. Education Minister Edouard Geffray condemned the threat, and the new decree, passed in July, allows a disruptive pupil to be transferred to another school in cases of significant risk to staff — an outcome now being considered for the boy and his sister. The incident has also revived memories of the 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty near Paris.