Can it be worse than this?

[timc17]

We will be moving to France in July with our four children who will all go to the local french state school.I have read with interest the many postings regarding the french school system and offer two examples of lunacy my wife and i are experiencing here in the UK.

1.My wife is a science teacher in a secondary school and for the last six months has been subjected to a daily barrage of verbal abuse and threats of violence from a group of 14 year olds.She has brought this to attention of senior school staff on many occasions.She has been informed that there is nothing the school can do and she must carry on as best she can.The school is in an affluent area of Norfolk.

2.Yesterday my eldest son had a school soccer match and asked if i could go and watch.I of course said yes and arrived at the school just after kick-off time only to find all the school gates locked.I eventually found a member staff who informed me that the children were always locked in when playing sport after school.This is to protect them but from what she didn't want to say.My son was obviously disappointed .

So my question - in France can it be worse than this?

 

timc17

[SaligoBay]

Son's collège (secondary school) here in France is always locked, even during the day.   One of the secretaries controls the buzzer thing for the gate, she's on guard in her room just inside.

And you know, a school with sports grounds sounds pretty cool!   Ours have a 10-minute walk to the public sports grounds, which, like public sports grounds the world over (I assume!) have a generous sprinkling of broken bottles and dog poo.   The école primaire had a 15-minute walk to the canteen for lunch, rain or shine, crossing 3 road-junctions on the way.

Playing school sport after school also seems like a foreign idea to me now!  Collège closes at 5.  

The école primaire had a buzzer-lock too, but they didn't have a secretary, so teachers had to take time off teaching to deal with other things.

The difference is that French people find these things absolutely normal.   In Britain, people see them as signs that Britain is going to the dogs.   Just depends how you look at it. 

The violence, par contre, sounds dreadful.  It does happen in France, but not usually in the areas where most Brits go, so it's not perceived as a problem.   A teacher friend was attacked by a brainless parent, he broke her finger.   I think she porté'd plainte against him, don't know how that all ended tho.  

[Dick Smith]

I went back to the school I used to teach at for the first time in a couple of years and found security fences and gates everywhere. This is partly due to Dunblane, etc., but also because the public seem to think that a school is just a public resource - parking in the staff car park (near to the station), using the grounds for walking dogs, sunbathing, picnicking (all during the school day), not to mention selling drugs and attacking people with whom they have had a row on the estate. And that's not just the kids...

Ever seen playground rage when 20 parents try to get their cars into the staff car park (all spaces allocated) to pick up their darlings at the end of school? Then there is the constant, unreasoning fear of abduction.

Schools now see themselves as non-public spaces (quite correctly during the school day) and arrange security appropriately.

[Tourangelle]

I think there is nothing really to chose between Britain and France really.  My mother has taught for years in an inner city secondary school in Birmingham, and tells stories with punchlines such as "and as I walked into the class room a brick came through the window".  However, my husband has equally alarming stories from his years in teaching, in particular in the Paris suburbs (St Ouen, Aubervilliers), of being personally threatened by parents and so on.  Schools reflect society, that's all. 

[Teamedup]

It could be better, it could be the same, it could be worse.

As SB says, the places brits tend to buy where it is probably better or the same. But there are no guarantees especially as colleges seem to be, around here at least, in the biggest town in the area. And big towns often have their own problems.

Maybe you should read a few things about violence in schools here, there is a lot of it available. We don't 'make' these things up. We just talk about what we see and hear and read.

And no we don't usually have after school activities. No we don't usually have sports fields attached to schools.

[Alexis]

The latest thing this week around here was the beating up of the school nurse by the sister, aged 25, of a pupil who had been to see the nurse in the morning because she had been beaten/slapped by her father....

The nurse must have advised the younger girl to report her father.

 

[Meo]

I think it very much depends on the area and school, just as it does in the UK.

I taught English in a collège in Pas-de-Calais which was like a fortress. It was surrounded by locked gates and access could only be gained by an intercom to a porter in a security box. There were no playing fields, which seems to be the norm over here, especially in Paris where I live now, though perhaps in rural areas access to such amenities is better.

Violence was also a problem and a young assistant was assaulted in the cantine by some of the teenage boys, other teachers had been threatened by parents unhappy with discipline procedures that had been carried out on their offspring.

In short, these are problems that occur EVERYWHERE and you won't escape them by escaping England.

[Mistral]

As people have already said, it is normal for schools in France to be locked all the time. I had to collect my son from primary school one day and spent  quite a long time ringing on the bell before one of the cantine staff saw me and let me in. There is no school secretary and the bell rings in the headmistress's office. Since, she was teaching, she didn't hear it. Of course, you wouldn't have any problems with after school football matches, because we don't have that sort of thing. My school has the luxury of having two basketball courts, but all other sports are taught in one of the town gyms (10 mins walk from the school -not fun for a 55 minute lesson)

As a teacher, I'm saddened by your story of threats and abuse. Here in france, I think it would have been dealt with by now. In my school, it certainly would have been. In other schools, where a chole class was causing problems, the head called all the parents in and gave them a little talking to.  But that depends on the head teacher. I know of one who actually called a teacher in to his office to tell him off for punishing a couple of pupils (they hadn't done their homework several times) Of course, he also cancelled the punishment.

I have had colleagues attacked by pupils and family members (one was knocked out in front of a class of 11 year olds by an older brother of a child he had punished earlier in the day) I'm lucky, I have only been attacked once, but it was very frghtening.

[SaligoBay]

<<I'm lucky, I have only been attacked once, but it was very frghtening.>>

Oh Mistral!  

[Val_2]

To be honest a lot depends on where you live in France as to the behaviour of the school children. As the kids get older,leave collège and go to Lycée it can get very violent and as for racisim,that is very much alive and well in rural France. I think overall, french kids have more respect for their teachers and elders as this is a french character trait,but it only takes one "rebel" and they all change for the worse. This week at Lycée they have had a strike by the pupils over intended changes and two boys in my son's class were arrested,one for being drunk out of his head. At collège too there were racist problems with foreigners both as teachers and my son being the only brit there as well as the usual cannabis and drinking BUT I have never heard of any physical attacks on teachers or other students.You have to remember that the law in France is very strict and any small misdemeanor means the gendarmes being involved and the parents being held responsible which deters a lot of trouble. I know teachers in the UK who have given up long ago through the w ay they cannot impliment discipline, another example of the namby pamby state there and do-gooders.