Less than 1% of classes in schools, colleges and high schools would be closed at the start of the week.
According to a first estimate - which should be revised upwards after more precise increases - the Ministry of National Education had 3,900 classes closed on Monday against 3,256 last week out of 528,400.
To discover
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An increase was logically expected since in the 19 departments under surveillance, each class now closes as soon as a positive Covid case is detected in a student, against three previously.
“
The situation is extremely variable from one department to another and from one school to another.
If some of my colleagues, especially in Île-de-France and in the North, do not stop managing closures, others have not reported any cases.
», Observes Philippe Vincent, from Snpden-Unsa, a union of school leaders.
At the Marcelin-Berthelot high school (Val-de-Marne), the principal Pascal Bolloré counted only two cases on Tuesday, and therefore two classes closed out of 53, when a neighboring college had to close 13 classes out of 20… The city of Paris alone , quite affected, counted for its part 3% of closed classes, that is to say 473, a doubling compared to last week.
For now, the vast majority of students can continue to attend school as usual.
But until when?
The government has been defending the idea of an open school for months, against many doctors.
He measured how “
homeschooling
” last year had been disastrous for the most vulnerable audiences.
The French Pediatric Society also alerts because the emergency services are invaded by increasingly young children, in the grip of suicide attempts or anxiety disorders.
Several epidemiological studies have also shown that schools are not accelerators of the epidemic.
They are only a reflection of it.
More prosaically, the closure of schools is very expensive for the country because it prevents many parents from working ...
Shock number
But what do these alerts weigh in the face of anxiety-provoking messages?
Warnings are increasing among teachers, who relate the difficulties in operating establishments whose staff affected by the epidemic are not always replaced.
Not to mention the teachers who find themselves with their own children on their hands and can no longer come to work.
Mayors and elected officials are calling for schools to be closed, especially in Seine-Saint-Denis, where the incidence reached a record of nearly 800 new cases recorded in one week per 100,000 inhabitants.
If, faced with the congestion of hospital services, medical pressure has been strong for a few weeks in favor of a closure, that of teachers' unions is no less.
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This weekend, a trade unionist from the National Union of Secondary Teachers (Snes) assured that his high school of 2,400 students, in Drancy, had 20 parents of students who have died of Covid for a year.
A shock figure that made the headlines of many media this weekend.
Verification made, it was actually parents in the broad sense, including grandparents, uncles, etc., of which we do not know precisely what pathology they died.
But the damage is done.
"
The media pressure is very strong, it becomes difficult to resist
", sighs within the majority where one begins to say that it will perhaps be necessary to go through a school reconfinement.
A measure possibly limited to the areas most affected by the virus.
