Iron Gate Academy is a strict nightmare school founded and run by 60-year-old Mr. Millin where any imperfection, rebellion, friendship, rule-breaking, or individuality is punished with death. Students, staff, and parents alike never know of the real world. From 6:15 AM to 7:45 PM every day of every week of every month, students study both regular and irregular subjects.
The school uniform is a white dress shirt, white dress socks and black dress shoes, with the addition of a dark gray dress-like suspender skirt with thick straps and a dark gray headband for the girls, and black dress pants for the boys. Students may also wear a dark gray headscarf if they prefer.
The girls can only have ear piercings, with 1 piercing per ear, and are only allowed to wear stud earrings, and when not put up, their hair cannot be shorter than mid-back once it grows to that length. The boys cannot have any piercings and their hair must be chin-length or shorter.
The school is almost completely devoid of color, with the only exceptions being hair, skin, eyes, blinking lights, and the kindergarten uniforms, which are color-coded onesies (pink for girls, blue for boys) with their ID number written on it.
The rules do include all the normal school rules; no running in the halls, no eating in class, no chewing gum, only speak when spoken to AND only with permission from a teacher, etc. But they also have the unusual ones like; no messy handwriting, no relationships beyond blood relatives, no physical, mental, emotional, or educational conditions, problems, illnesses, disorders, stuff like that.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You can't transfer in or out of Iron Gate. You have to be born into it. And if you're the first in your family to go there, you never meet your biological parents. You just have stand-ins who look like they're your parents.
Students wake up at 5:30 AM every morning, brush their teeth, put on their uniform, brush their hair, and do all the other necessary stuff, all in 20 minutes. Then they have 10 minutes to themselves. After that, they go outside and wait to be driven to school with their class. At 6:15 AM, class starts. They change classes every 15 minutes on weekdays, and after meals on weekends. Breakfast is from 8 to 8:30, lunch and recess is from 12 to 1, and dinner is from 5 to 5:30. They go home at 7:45 PM, change into school-assigned after-school clothes, brush their teeth, brush their hair, all before 8, which is when they do their homework. At 9, they go to bed. On weekdays, they have mixed classes, where they teach stuff associated with both genders. On weekends, they have gender-specific classes, where they split up the boys and girls, and teach them things associated with the corresponding gender.
There are yearly personal screenings, the day before each student's birthday. The screening starts with the student stating their full name, birthdate, and ID number, then a blood test, then a mental screening, then a physical screening, then an emotional screening, and finally, and educational screening where 30 children of each gender are screened instead of just 1 student. If anything goes wrong, the student is deemed faulty, and is killed, or as everyone calls it, terminated.
The students start in the womb, before they are even born. They are taught by the teachers that speak through microphones attached to the bellies of expectant mothers, so the baby can be taught live. After they are born, they are screened for any imperfections, conditions, or deforms. If they're perfect, they move onto kindergarten. If they pass the screening, they move up to 1st grade on their 1st birthday, 2nd grade on their 2nd birthday, all the way up to 22nd grade on their 22nd birthday.