Don't talk to him about distance class! “It is at school that you learn and when it is closed, there is simply no class. Everything else is com ', fulminates Pierre Ripart, school teacher and union representative (Snuipp FSU) in Oise. In this department, all schools, from kindergarten to high school, as well as nurseries, will close for two weeks from Monday because of the epidemic of Covid-19 coronavirus, announced Friday March 5 in the early evening Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. The same decision was made for schools, colleges, high schools and nurseries in the Haut-Rhin.
The hypothesis of a total closure in the whole country, as in Italy, was not this Friday, however, on the agenda on this side of the Alps, even in the event of the outbreak of stage 3 of the 'epidemic. "It is not the right decision to close everything," said this Friday morning the Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer, arguing that "it is very important to maintain the functioning of the country".
"We are not ready for a real distance class"
"The school is especially not ready," persists Francette Popineau, spokesperson for the main union of primary teachers, Snuipp-FSU. We are ready for some sort of improved holiday notebooks, yes, but not for a real distance learning class where children would learn new concepts. "
According to figures released on Friday by Jean-Michel Blanquer, "about 150" schools, colleges and high schools were already undergoing closure measures Friday morning, taken by the prefectures in conjunction with the health authorities. About 45,000 young people asked to stay at home.
According to information from the Ministry of Labor, "in the absence of a childcare solution", their parents can ask a doctor, authorized by the Regional Health Agency, for a notice to stop work, without a waiting day and for a period "corresponding to the recommended period of isolation for the child".
In the Oise, 191 “virtual classes” created
So far, the use of the online course site made available by Cned, the public distance school service, has remained modest: in the academies of Amiens (Somme) and Rennes (Ille-et- Vilaine), the most affected by the closings, 6,500 students and 850 teachers have connected to it since Monday, according to the Directorate General of School Education, mainly in primary. In the Oise department, 191 "virtual classes" of the Cned have been created, for a department which counts 5000 teachers.
In middle and high school, teachers have more recourse to the intranets of their establishments, used for several years to communicate with families, to emails or to private platforms, like that of the start-up Klassroom, which decided to make its usually paid site available to schools free of charge during the health crisis. "You still need to have the parents' addresses: in a Creil school, the director had only eight family contacts, for 120 students," notes Pierre Ripart.
Elodie (the first name has been changed), a kindergarten director who already communicated before the crisis by email with the parents, has managed since the beginning of the week to send families daily activity ideas, to do at home with children aged 3 to 5. Count the shells on the kitchen table as a math workshop, learn a nursery rhyme or tell stories…
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"We detail the sequences in our messages, so that parents can reproduce at home the usual work of the class, without putting them in front of a screen, explains the teacher, who has" at heart to maintain a link with the children and parents in this difficult climate ... "" But, she notes, we do it with the means at hand, our computers and our personal Internet connections. "
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