At school, your face must be recognisable

There are many, very practical reasons why people’s faces must be recognisable within a school.

This is not about calling religious beliefs, traditions or personal freedoms into question, but about ensuring certain essential conditions for the proper functioning of a public institution: reliable identification, security, the protection of minors, the smooth running of educational activities and the assumption of responsibility.

The first issue concerns the identification of students. The school must be able to verify with certainty that the person present in the classroom is indeed the one who is enrolled and registered. With the face completely covered, checking attendance becomes more difficult and, in extreme cases, the possibility of someone else taking the student’s place cannot be ruled out. This need becomes even more apparent during written assessments, exams, laboratory tests and all those activities in which it is essential to verify, beyond any doubt, the identity of the student taking the test. The credibility of academic assessment presupposes, in fact, that there are no doubts as to the identity of the person being assessed.

There is also the broader issue of access security. A school is not an anonymous space: pupils, teachers, staff, parents, external experts and suppliers enter it every day. Knowing who is inside the building and being able to recognise them is a fundamental measure for the prevention and protection of the entire school community. The Ministry of the Interior, including in its most recent guidelines on safety in schools, has emphasised the need to strengthen prevention, surveillance and protection within school environments.

The issue becomes even more sensitive in nursery and primary schools. When pupils leave school, teachers are responsible for handing a child over exclusively to a parent or to a person formally authorised to collect them. If the person presenting themselves has their face completely covered, the mere fact that they claim to be the mother, a relative or an authorised representative cannot be considered sufficient. School staff must be able to verify the identity of the person to whom they are entrusting a child. A teacher cannot be asked to take on such a serious responsibility on the basis of a mere statement. The person presenting themselves could be a different member of the family, an unauthorised person or, in the most serious case, someone attempting to impersonate the person designated by the family. The point, therefore, is not to establish the nature of the family relationship between the individuals, but to verify something much simpler: that the person collecting the child is precisely the person authorised by the school and the family.