school leaders trained by the gendarmerie to know how to react in the event of aggression

Since 2018, National Education has offered training to school leaders to learn how to manage crisis situations. The courses are supervised by police officers.

How should we react to the intrusion of an armed person into a high school or to a student brandishing a knife? Since 2018, training courses have existed in the Amiens academy, for the moment mainly intended for school leaders, to learn how to manage crisis situations. High-intensity training courses lasting three days, supervised by police officers.

One of these training courses took place this week in Montdidier, in the Somme. In the middle of a theoretical presentation of the security measures in the establishments, several shots are fired. Blank shots obviously, but the stress is very real. Everyone runs to get out of the room.

The idea is to see how we react in this type of situation and what reflexes to implement. There are more than forty newly appointed principals or deputy principals following this training in the Amiens academy: “As a manager we must check and see what is happening (…) hence the interest for us to follow this training and understand the issues”, said one of them. Lieutenant Cogez, instructor for the gendarmerie, explains to the trainees how to switch to mode “fighter” : “It’s a bit of a culture shock for them. It’s certain that if someone had told me that I would be doing this kind of outreach to teachers, 25 years ago it would have surprised me. But I think that It’s necessary”.

“The goal is really to show them that they have to surpass themselves. We take them a little bit out of their comfort zone.”

Lieutenant Cogez

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The scenarios follow one another: intrusion of an armed student, the irruption of a virulent parent who ends up pulling out a pistol or even a violent fight between young people, where one injures another with a knife. Trainees learn to use tables and chairs to protect themselves, to move and not stay frozen, while keeping the students safe. Testing exercises but the training is useful, assure these heads of establishments: “I take it more as an opportunity to be trained by professionals than to be alone in my high school and not knowing at all what measures we should take, how to protect our students, manage our emotions,” assures one of them. “For us it’s having reflexes, no longer needing to think, that it becomes automatic”, adds his colleague. Everyone obviously has in mind the assassinations of Samuel Paty in 2020 and of Dominique Bernard a month and a half ago in Arras.