PARIS: French Education Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem says 27 members of staff in schools and high schools were struck off in 2015 because of paedophilia-related offenses.

Speaking on French radio RTL, Vallaud-Belkacem says most of those fired where male staffers. Vallaud-Belkacem did not say whether they were teachers or administrative personal, nor when the wrongdoing happened.

France was rocked last year by a paedophilia scandal in which a school headmaster who had been appointed despite a previous conviction for possessing child pornography was charged with aggravated raping several of his pupils.

Vallaud-Belkacem says we "believe that a teacher, or an adult, or an administrative agent in contact with children can't work children as soon as he has been sentenced for offenses as serious as paedophilia or child pornography."