"Do you have any news for the start of the school year? The question revolves around the WhatsApp and Facebook groups of parents of students, who have become hyperactive again in recent days. Same fears on the networks of teachers or school leaders while the Ministry of Education receives the main unions for two days.
Masks from middle school
Students will have to wear anti-Covid protection from middle school all the time and everywhere indoors (in class, in hallways and in the canteen before eating). And at recess? It will be "à la carte". “I do not see how to allow people to go out without a mask in my establishment. At each recess, there are 1,300 students in the schoolyard, 460 in the middle school yard! », Points out Bruno Bobkiewicz, national secretary of SNPDEN, the union of heads of establishments and principal in Vincennes (Seine-et-Marne).
Kindergartens and primary schools will go to school with their noses in the wind. The mask is considered ineffective in this case because children do not always know how to use it well. The only exception is that if a child has symptoms, the school will put on a mask while waiting for an adult to pick him up. What about the little ones? It is forbidden because of the suffocation risk. “Suddenly, the mask is the solution. Distance is no longer a question, ”fulminates Joëlle Paris, from the federation of parents of FCPE students. As for teachers, everyone is also required to wear a mask, except in kindergarten where it is only recommended.
And in the canteen?
We cannot spread out students' lunch hours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to limit the mixing. So the heads of school are tearing their hair out: "At this critical moment, young people find themselves almost spitting on each other", notes Bruno Bobkiewicz, who intends to seek clarification from the Minister of Education Jean- Michel Blanquer. Should children be encouraged to eat at home to loosen tables? Should we in the refectory act "as if nothing had happened"? "Always send everything back to the local, it's a resignation from the ministry", annoys Fabienne Bellin, maths teacher in Versailles (Yvelines).
In case of contamination
Jean-François Delfraissy, the president of the Scientific Council, declared this Monday on France Info: "There will be contaminations at school but we will manage them". How? 'Or' What? The procedure has not changed since June. The child who shows symptoms is isolated, his parents must recover him. At the same time, the establishment warns the families of its class neighbors, and particularly the frail. In case of proven infection, we can close classes, a priori not schools. Professor Delfraissy is reassuring: "Children are carriers of the virus, but [...] in small quantities", and "severe forms in children are exceptional". According to him, the contamination is rather in the adult-child sense. Nothing to reassure Joëlle Paris, from the FCPE parents' federation, who fears an explosion of absences among teachers.