School killings leave stunned Austria and France searching for answers

Two shocking attacks within two hours of each other, in France and Austria, have left parents and governments reeling and at a loss how to protect school students from random, deadly violence.

At about 08:15 on Tuesday, a 14-year-old boy from an ordinary family in Nogent, eastern France, drew out a kitchen knife during a school bag check and fatally stabbed a school assistant.

Not long afterwards in south-east Austria, a 21-year-old who had dropped out of school three years earlier, walked into Dreierschützengasse high school in Graz at 09:43, and shot dead nine students and a teacher with a Glock 19 handgun and a sawn-off shotgun.

In both countries there is a demand for solutions and for a greater focus on young people who resort to such violence.

Austria has never seen a school attack on this scale, but the French stabbing took place during a government programme aimed at tackling the growth in knife crime

That is what strikes the chord in France. If an ordinary boy can turn out like this from watching too many violent videos, then who is next?

Significantly, the French government had only just approved showing the British Netflix series Adolescence as an aid in schools.

There are differences, of course.

The boy arrested for the killing of a teenage girl in the TV series yields to evil "toxic male" influences on social media – but there is the same question of teenagers being made vulnerable by isolation online.

Across the political spectrum, there are calls for action but little agreement on what should be the priority, nor hope that anything can make much difference.

Before the killing, President Emmanuel Macron had angered the right by saying they were too obsessed with crime, and not sufficiently interested in other issues like the environment.

The Nogent attack put him on the back foot, and he has repeated his pledge to ban social media to under 15-year-olds.

But there are two difficulties. One is the practicality of the measure, which in theory is being dealt with by the EU but is succumbing to endless procrastination.

The other is that, according to the prosecutor, the boy was not especially interested in social media. It was violent video games that were his thing.

Prime Minister François Bayrou has said that sales of knives to under-15s will be banned. But the boy took his from home.

Bayrou says airport-style metal-detectors should be tested at schools, but most heads are opposed.

The populist right wants tougher sentences for teenagers carrying knives, and the exclusion of disruptive pupils from regular classes.

But the boy in Nogent was not a problem child.

About the only measure everyone says is needed is more provision of school doctors, nurses and psychologists in order to detect early signs of pupils going off the rails.

That of course will require a lot of money, which is another thing France does not have a lot of.