By 139 votes against 126, the Senate agreed with Jules Simon (in truth, it was a question, the Senate knew it and Ferry too - of voting God or not God). The House rejected the senatorial amendment.
Ferry resigned himself to withdrawing the third bill, reserving to take it up again:which he did under the second Freycinet ministry. The political atmosphere was no longer the same; it was the time when the extreme left was talking about an integral revision”; the Senate, before this threat, trembled and had, as we have seen, no hope except in the protection of Ferry.
It was by skilfully exploiting this modified situation that Ferry obtained his revenge on Jules Simon who, having reissued his amendment, was beaten this time by 167 votes against 123. Ferry had made a point of proclaiming during the debate, with great sincerity , that the neutrality of the school would not be a malevolent neutrality :
If a public teacher, he says, forgot himself enough to institute in his school a teaching hostile to the religious beliefs of anyone, he would be punished as quickly and as severely as if he had committed the misdeed of beating his pupils. .
The project on compulsory education finally became law:the law of March 28, 1882, charter of neutrality for primary schools - neutrality, a form of secularism.
Winner of this hard and subtle battle, Ferry did his best to appease the passions that his reform had aroused. The start of the primary schools in autumn 1882 did not give rise to any serious incident, despite the suppression of the teaching of catechism by the teacher.
It should be noted that it was only a question of the neutrality, or, if you will, the secularism of the subjects taught. In other words, there was no question of the secularism of the teaching staff:after the Ferry reform, (authorized) congregationalists could remain and become public teachers.
It was later, under the President of the Council Goblet, a moderate radical, that the law of October 30, 1886 was passed, according to which the staff of public schools would henceforth be secular; the municipal council therefore lost the right in the future to appoint congregationists (even authorized) public teachers secularization would be achieved within five years for boys' schools and only measure of post extinctions for girls' schools.