Police will begin carrying out random bag searches for knives and other weapons in schools, in a bid to fight an increase in violent attacks, the French education minister has announced.
Speaking to French broadcaster BFMTV on Friday, education minister Elisabeth Borne said: "I want us to be able to organise, together with the prefect, the prosecutor and the representative of the education system, regular bag searches at the entrance of schools."
The spot searches will begin in the spring, and will be carried out by police as teachers and school staff are not authorised to search pupils.
The new policy was prompted by stabbings becoming "much more common," Borne said.
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Schools under surveillance
She added she would also seek a rule change by which any pupil found with a bladed weapon at school would automatically have to appear before a disciplinary council. Any such case would also trigger a notification of prosecutors "without exception". Currently such a procedure is at the discretion of heads of schools.
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At the start of the month, a 17-year-old high school student was seriously wounded in a stabbing at his school in Bagneux, a southwestern suburb of Paris.
Seine-Saint-Denis, a region north of the capital with above-average crime rates, this month placed around 20 middle and high schools under police surveillance, with some 100 officers deployed.
The move was to help "prevent a repeat of violent acts" after a series of incidents, the authorities said.
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(with AFP)
