The school had been suffering from an ever increasing rate of dropouts.
This state of affairs was reflected in the marked increase of crime within the local community. The authorities knew that something had to be done. Various strategies had been tried and failed. It was only after a great deal of debate that it was decided they would implement the Purgatory Program. This was a scheme whereby pupils whose behaviour was so bad and virtually uncontrollable and were regularly producing poor test results and were therefor most likely to drop out, were chosen for the program. The selected pupils were then sent straight to hell.
A room at the school was set up for the purpose, and a specialised medical practitioner was engaged to perform the complex medical process, where death is induced for a period of several minutes, followed by a return to life. Those familiar with the procedure regard it as a particularly powerful wakeup treatment. The idea being that what the pupil experiences while down there is so ghastly that on their return they immediately mend their ways.
This program was fully instigated and ran for several days. The results were excellent, with those returning having a completely different attitude regarding their place in the community, and for that matter, the world!
It has to be said that despite the very high success rate, around five percent didn’t return. Seemingly, this small number were quite obediently resigned to remain there.
Furthermore, this in itself was not seen as a problem as it was generally agreed these particular participants were going to end up there anyway.