It's the mid-morning break at Crabeth College, a Dutch high school. The student assembly area is thick with cigarette smoke. Health statistics show an alarming increase in teenage smoking in the Netherlands but, reflecting the nation's renowned spirit of tolerance, designated smoking zones are provided in many second-level schools.

At Crabeth College, an impressive complex of modern buildings in a leafy suburb of Gouda - world famous town of cheese - smoking at break time is condoned. But violent attacks by pupils on teachers, bullying, vandalism and trespass by drugs dealers posing as students is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

The 3,000-pupil college with pupils from 12 years up to 19 has taken the controversial step of employing its own `A-Team' patrol of security guards to maintain law and order throughout its corridors of learning. The uniformed guards are trained in crowd control, drugs searches and combating violent outbursts. They patrol corridors and grounds and monitor recreation during school hours.

"When we decided to take this step, the media likened us to Alcatraz," says spokesman Wim Blok. "There had been one or two serious assaults on teachers but our college was no different and no more violent than the average high school today. Our philosophy is one of prevention being better than cure."

Other colleges had much worse problems. In one Amsterdam school five teachers were injured in recent times by a young mob taking vengeance on a librarian who ticked off a student for failure to return a book on time. Dozens of other incidents are regularly reported to teacher organisations but only those categorised dramatic come to public notice.

"It's true that some teachers at our school were in difficulties keeping order when they should have been teaching," recalls Blok. "It was getting to the stage where we could look out the window of our administration building and actually see the drugs couriers on their mobile phones at the school gates making contact with comrades inside who were coming and going, passing as students."

Reaction among pupils to the radical solution of using security guards has been mixed. Some students openly resent the presence of the guards whom they claim make them uncomfortable and are intimidating. Others, especially pupils from ethnic minorities, have been very positive.

Teachers at the school have also welcomed the move wholeheartedly. At last they can relax during their coffee breaks, they say, and return to class knowing if things get rough backup is at hand.

Some Dutch educators criticised the attempt to peacefully confront problems of escalating violence as being too drastic. Since then a nationwide report has revealed that many schools tended to sweep the breakdown in discipline under the carpet for years, fearful of its effect on intake and their reputations. It also showed a disturbing level of violence in schools - it was estimated that over 25 per cent of students carry weapons ranging from flick knives to tear gas canisters.

When the Dutch Ministry for Education established a schools' crisis help-line is was besieged, not, as was expected, by young victims of bullying, racism and sexual intimidation but by teachers enduring a endless disciplinary nightmare. Some complained of being physically attacked. Others told of damning sex harassment charges by students.

In several schools sex abuse charges by students were found to have no foundation after long-running investigations. This is becoming such a pressing problem that Dutch teachers are increasingly warned by heads to take precautionary measures, such as ensuring there are always several student present and keeping the door open at all times where they cannot avoid being alone in class with one pupil.

Other colleges are now looking closely at Crabeth College's strategy and schools in The Hague, Rotterdam and elsewhere are either following its example or considering such measures.

According to a Dutch education adviser, Dr Ann de Graaf, uniformed security guards, metal detectors and electronic passes will be in widespread use in European schools in the future. "Violence is quickly becoming the norm, he says. "It's connected to developments in society. Schools will have to face up to the problem and use all necessary methods to stamp it out."

According to Dutch Teacher's Union leader Evert de Jong, such strong armed tactics are a sad reflection on their profession and society in general. "The sight of patrolling security guards and metal detectors inevitably increase tensions and the air of confrontation."

He believes that Irish teachers' concerns regarding violent attacks would be better addressed by training procedures in coping with difficult pupils and defusing potentially violent episodes. As part of a ongoing Dutch Education Ministry funded safe schools project, 60 colleges where serious disciplinary problems exist were recently singled out for teacher and student courses on control of violence and improving relationships and the school atmosphere. Hundreds of schools in Holland have been sent a module on a range of procedures concerning attacks on teachers, racist behaviour and bullying.

New guidelines for complaints of sexual harassment in schools have just been introduced. De Jong, a member of the European Trade Union Committee for Education, believes their guidelines should be made available to Irish and other EU member state educators.