The Elysee Palace had always made the closing of schools the last frontier, the last resort, in its doctrine since the first confinement in 2020. "Believing in the responsibility of the French is never a bet", underlined Emmanuel Macron .
This Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron ruled and decided to override the time "of a more dangerous epidemic".
"We must set a new course for the coming months", declared the President of the Republic.
“To continue to protect the life of the future, that is our children, we must go the extra mile.
(...) We can congratulate ourselves on having been able to open our schools for so long, ”recalled Emmanuel Macron.
“The education of our children is not negotiable.
The school calendar will be adapted so as not to leave our children without learning, ”he concluded.
The executive therefore decided to close the schools this Friday and to change the school vacation calendar.
This measure will apply at the national level rather than in the only 19 departments concerned to date by the reinforced health restrictions.
infog The Parisian
From Tuesday April 6, after the Easter Monday holiday, kindergarten, elementary school and high school students will have four-day distance education until Friday April 9 (except for the children of nursing staff and essential trades) .
Then there will be two weeks of school holidays for all zones combined.
The current return will take place from April 26.
Classes will again be face-to-face for kindergartens and primary and remote for middle and high schools until the following May 3.
Distance learning courses
In these three weeks of closure of secondary schools and high schools, there would therefore be the two weeks of official vacation, with a period of “remote” lessons for all students.
Another remote period will follow for the older ones, when they return from vacation.
For higher education, nothing has changed compared to the measures already in force.
A partial unemployment scheme will be put in place for parents who can no longer work to take care of their children.
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The increasingly important presence of the virus throughout the territory is the reason for the choice of the extension to the whole country.
A decision that would also stop the progression of the epidemic, especially in regions where the incidence is the lowest and resuscitations are not saturated.
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Emmanuel Macron was forced to take a position due to the explosion of Covid-19 cases and the closure of cascading classes in schools in the most affected departments.
Some, like the mayor of Paris, demanded their closure, while the parents of students are already seeing "the hell" of "school at home" approaching.
Prime Minister Jean Castex will deliver a statement on this subject on Thursday, which will be followed by a debate and a vote in both chambers of parliament.
Unions demand "a plan to vaccinate teachers"
Since the start of the week, new rules issued to curb the Covid epidemic at school, which consist in closing a class on the first case detected, automatically lead to very many closures.
In Paris in particular, they have more than tripled in two days.
In the Senate Wednesday, the Minister of Education affirmed that the government is doing “the maximum.
Whatever the elements of the declaration of the President of the Republic this evening, we all know that the principle which animates it, it is the priority to the childhood and the youth ”, he insisted.
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Follow our direct on the health situation in France.
This statement aims to respond, among others, to the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who in view of the "very serious" health situation and the "very great disorganization" in the establishments according to her, had requested in the morning the closure schools in the capital.
"About 20,000 students" were Wednesday "not in class either because they are sick or because the classes are closed", these being at the number of 850, she declared, at two weeks and a half of school holidays in Île-de-France.
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"It will not be the whole thing to decide this evening of a closure, it will be necessary behind a real plan of reopening, with a plan of vaccination of the teachers, effective measures in the canteen or in terms of distancing", demanded Guislaine David, general secretary of Snuipp-FSU (first primary school union) in advance.
Because otherwise, she fears "that it will not reopen".
