When the school software betrays truants...
SAL, the school administration solution: what promises to be a solution for teachers can also be used to monitor pupils and encourages professional guesswork. The administration tool, which has been compulsory at secondary schools in Basel since around a year ago, requires teachers to enter all of their pupils' grades and absences. And parents have access to this data.
Of course, such an SAL can be seen as practical, and it was introduced with arguments like these: «Look, now you can book the computer room online! Great!»
But surveillance always comes across as friendly and friendliness can turn out to be a Trojan horse. SAL also contains a particularly dubious column: Observations. Teachers can use it to note how Jan behaved at school today. If the teacher authorises this, Jan's parents can also read this column. «You were talking to your bench neighbour? Yikes! Instead of working efficiently, you looked out of the window a little too long? Woe betide you, I'll write that down!»
Teachers, who have always preferred to gossip about their pupils rather than defend their good reputation, now have the right tool and the legitimisation from the very top to do so. Filling in the observation column is still voluntary and only the particularly rascally teachers with a tendency to be denunciators have so far written anything in it. Teachers who fill in every column in anticipatory obedience would probably do so even if they were asked about the suspected sexual orientation. After all, parents are probably also very interested in this.
The pupils' tedious pages are no longer discussed in the staff room and then forgotten again. No, now there can be an official entry that mum and dad can view immediately at the click of a mouse. There's always a better way.
The SAL printout in the application documents
What if the observation column is no longer voluntary next summer? That's how it usually works. If something tricky needs to be introduced, then it's voluntary at first, only for those who want it. At some point you get used to the idea that there's an observation column, and then it doesn't bother you any more when it becomes compulsory.
The mere existence of this column is already an indication that it should be used in future. Why else would it be there? Administrations don't just make columns for the fun of it. What they come up with should sooner or later deliver results.
For example, those that have to be enclosed with applications for apprenticeships.
Then the frequent chatting with your neighbour, looking out of the window and the occasional truancy will no longer be tempi passati. No more drawing a line under it and starting again. No, the minor offences are then recorded in the relentless SAL memory, which the teacher now also has access to. Yes, this is a dream of the future. But even today, pupils in Basel have already become a little more transparent.
Aren't truants themselves to blame?
Now you could shrug your shoulders and ask what the problem is? After all, you can't get boys used to systematic monitoring and sanctions early enough.
But you could also defend puberty as a phase with its own laws. A phase that should be protected from total control by teachers or parents.
Today, self-orientated learning is considered progressive. Pupils are led to believe that they themselves control their learning process, that they set their own learning goals. After all, they are taken seriously as autonomous individuals. There is a certain irony in the fact that pupils are being monitored more closely than ever before. In psychology, this is called double bind. It's supposed to be unhealthy.
Playing truant is a feeling of freedom and teaches us to show solidarity!
And if parents can now immediately see whether their daughters and sons have been to school, then there's no more truancy. And hand on heart, playing truant from time to time was one of the highlights of my school days. Imitating parents' signatures and getting your own time, defending a tiny bit of freedom. Playing truant is first and foremost a feeling: sitting on the Rhine or on a rooftop on a Thursday afternoon instead of in geography and doing what you want and with whom you want.
And playing hooky teaches you agency, it also teaches you to show solidarity, not to betray your mates. But we also learnt not to play truant when your mates are dependent on you. Ditching is not an option. And if it does get out, you have to stand up, apologise and serve the punishment.
But now the mums know that you weren't in Geo before anyone can come up with an excuse for themselves or their mates.
In addition to all the humanistic messages, the school's message has always been: You should make tracks! Then this message is now louder than ever in the Basel region.
Do they actually still read Orwell at school?
Picture: Fotolia
Background information on the SAL school software
The school administration software SAL is compulsory for grammar schools and secondary schools in the canton of Baselland; primary schools can use it voluntarily. In other cantons, the schulNetz software is used in many schools. SAL is a further development of the schulNetz software and is the first solution to be standardised across several school levels. According to the author, SAL could serve as a model for further development in other cantons. However, no concrete plans are yet known.
The canton's education law regulates who can access the data from the school administration programme. This includes the children themselves - and the legal guardians via their children's account. This section of the law was only passed by the cantonal parliament when the Education Act was partially revised in June 2016 - a popular referendum was not held against it. The more precise access authorisations will be regulated in an ordinance, work on which is currently underway in the canton. «Parents' access to their children's school data is therefore in line with the will of the legislator,» says Thomas Held, academic employee at the Data Protection Authority of the Canton of Baselland. Editorial office FUF