French College: Security Measures

French Collège:  Complete Mind and Body Control

Principle Number 2:  The Challenge of Security 

The Challenge

• The school is legally responsable for keeping the child on its premises, and must ensure that the child does not leave the premises without permission.
• There are 600 pupils
• The teachers do not know the pupils (by and large , for reasons see below)
• Every pupil has a different timetable:  on one particular day, some start at 8.30, others 9.30, others 12.30, some leave for lunch, others stay, some finish at 2.30, others 6.00pm and so on.  
• The pupils do not wear uniform.  So no-one has any way of knowing if 11 - 14 year olds are on the street, which school they come from or whether or not they should be there.   

The Security Measures

Perimeter Fence, one guarded entrance/exit

Foolproof ID papers:   children carry identification with them at all times.  The ID has a photo, so that no child may assume the identity of another for practical reasons, the ID contains instructions from parents, sealed in plastic, so no child may arrange for someone to impersonate his or her parent/legal guardian (parent phone calls are not accepted as legal evidence as they could be impersonated).  It contains a timetable for checking that lessons are indeed over.  This information is checked by a teacher guarding the perimator fence and gate every time a child tries to leave.

Why teachers do not know the pupils (by and large)

• High turnover of teaching staff is a national policy
• Classes are mixed up each year (divide and rule policy?)
• Teachers are subject teachers, their job is to transmit their subject lesson (dicted by the state timing and content) to a succession of classes, to mark work and keep numeric records of those marks.
• There is no opportunity, reason or encouragement for getting to know their pupils in their job, it would be considered at best as irrelevant to their job of transmitting classes, and at worst counterproductive.
• There is no dividing down of the 600 into sub-groups where getting to know each other as teacher-pupils could take place.
• If a class teacher did get to know a child, he or she would probably not indicate this by any behaviour, in the name of professional integrity and fairness to the other inmates.
• The 'class teacher' is a subject teacher who has an administrative task to perform for one group of children which you could call a class.  This class teacher does not have any pastoral role and the class has no particular identity other than this administrative grouping.

Exceptions:

• If you child has been 'noticed ' for nonconformity in one of the designated compulsory work or general behaviour specifications
• If the termly or yearly calculation of a pupil's marks adds up to an interesting number, high or low