The school had never seen this. From Monday, March 16, all kindergartens, schools, colleges, high schools and universities will lower the curtain "until further notice", Emmanuel Macron announced on Thursday evening, March 12, during his television address. A shock measure, intended to "continue to save time" in the race against the clock started between hospital services and the epidemic of Covid-19.
The presidential announcement also responds to the little music of panic, which has become more and more insistent in recent days, among parents of students as teachers. Thus Celia (the first name has been changed), who without waiting for the decision of the Head of State, had ordered Tuesday to his 16-year-old son to skip school. Since a case of Covid-19 had been diagnosed on a teacher at his Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire high school in Etampes (Essonne), concern had taken hold of this mother, perplexed, and even angry to see the his children's establishment still open. "This puts us in a dilemma: my son does not want to miss class, but it does not seem reasonable to me to go," she summarized. Why not just close two weeks? She asked this Thursday afternoon. “We have been drenched for days with the precautionary principle and when a case is declared in a place frequented by thousands of students, we leave it open… I don't understand. "
Absences already "abnormally high"
Christine, (the first name has been changed), director of a kindergarten in Seine-Saint-Denis, has already seen absenteeism gallop among her young students this week, without the parents clearly explaining why their child stays at home. "Some people tell me that he is tired, or not very well ... But I can see that the absences are abnormally high," she says. I miss the equivalent of a class and a half, out of six, since the parents learned that a municipal agent lives in the Oise and therefore stays at home as a precautionary measure.
"More and more parents express their concern when they hear that children are sick, without anyone knowing what they have," confirmed Paul Devin, spokesperson for the union of national education inspectors. (SNPI-FSU), in charge of primary schools.
Close, everywhere? In Paris, among the parents of the Victor Hugo school district, where a student in his final year was declared sick, Jean-Michel also asked himself the question, all the more nagging as the list of European countries that had had appeal to this radical decision, fraught with implications in the daily and economic life of a country: after Italy and Greece, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Ireland have in turn announced the closure of schools, this Thursday.
Fear of spreading the virus in classrooms has also won teachers over the past few days. “We keep receiving messages like this: why don't we close two weeks? "Assured Nicolas Glière, Thursday, administrator of the collective of teachers" red pens ", which claims 71,000 members. "We did not have to be sacrificed on the altar of economic activity," he said.