On October 16, 2020, an eighteen-year-old jihadist beheaded Samuel Paty, a teacher of History and Geography , not far from his middle school Le Bois d'Aulne in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (Yvelines). The attack was motivated by a desire for retaliation, after the teacher used cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed as a teaching tool during a course on freedom of expression. The violence of this attack and the choice of its target had a considerable impact in France but also abroad. Indeed, hitting a teacher and, by extension, the school institution with the republican symbol it represents, ensures important and immediate media coverage. If the young age and the lack of preparation of the assailant suggest that he had potentially not taken all these elements into account, it is relevant to look at educational institutions as targets of planned attacks. By studying the phenomenon and its evolution in the western world (I), it is possible to identify parts of the answer concerning prevention (II), detection (III), but also the security-based response to these attacks (IV).