R's School: the impersonal touch

JC goes to Parents 'Meeting'
Mrs Scruton, showing her sadistic credentials, arranged the parents 'meeting' for 8.30am on a Saturday.  JC had to go because of my entirely justifiable fear that I would not be able to keep my mouth shut.  He was Not Happy at having to get up early on a Saturday.

JC set off, and sat down at a meeting for quite some time before someone said 'Who's dad are you?'
and when he said our son's name they said 'no, we don't know him' (how very true) and he eventually realised he was in class 5C rhymes with 5E where he should have been.  He was forced to telephone R from the concrete courtyard and ask him what room the meeting was in (something he had already been told), and luckily R has a keen interest in figures and had retained the number of the room;  242.

JC was handed a printout of R's personal profile consisting of a column of numbers out of 20, available on Pronote, the mark-consulting website.   The assembled parents waited until a teacher came in to make a short presentation.   There was sometimes time for JC to read a book between the departure of one and the arrival of another, which pleased him.

"Did the assembled parents interract with one another in any way?"  I asked.  "No".
"Did anyone appear to know our son or say anything about him?"  "No".
"Did the teachers interract with the parents in any way?'  "No.  But some of the younger teachers said if we had any questions or difficulties we should not hesitate to contact them, and some gave their email address".

(Clearly a trap;  I certainly won't be contacting any of them, anything I say could be used in evidence against me.)

JC said it was a good meeting because he saw the face of every teacher and it was all over in under an hour. I said I didn't see why they couldn't set up a site called Proprof where the teachers posted a photo of themselves and a short presentation of their work which could be accessed at a time to suit the parent.

R goes Missing
Yesterday the school phoned JC at work to say R had not turned up to his English class and was officially Missing.  JC phoned me in a whisper from his Very Important Meeting to delegate the problem.  After careful consideration of the options (run away from home, thought lesson was cancelled, lying ill in bedroom without my knowledge) I phoned the school to ask if there couldn't be some mistake.  There was, another boy bearing the same surname was not in class.  R told me later this boy was ill, and presumably without parental leave of absence.  The secretary was most apologetic, rare in a Frenchwoman, but she wasn't looking for reassurance from me, she was inconsolable because an ADMINISTRATIVE ERROR HAD BEEN MADE.

Sapristi Knuckoes.