Between 18 and 25 November, the number of closed classes increased from 4,000 to 8,890, making very concrete the fifth wave of the pandemic for parents and teachers.
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The faces of parents have stretched out before primary schools in recent days. They scrub again every morning the billboards and worry about any message sent by the director. And this last tasks for each new email of parents who could announce him a case of Covid-19 among his students.
Until Thursday, November 25 and the change of protocol announced by Jean-Michel Blanquer, the rule was simple: a positive student and the whole class came home for seven days. The machine suddenly wrapped up with the beginning of the fifth wave of the epidemic. These closures increased from 4,000 to 8,890 between 18 and 25 November. Thus, 180,000 families have undergone this increase, estimated the Minister of National Education.
To fix it, he announced a new device: tests will be deployed for the entire class if a student is positive, rather than hiring a closure for seven days, and his negative comrades will be able to take the courses immediately. If a slightest circulation of the virus remains to be proved with the establishment of this measurement, it will drop mechanically the number of students in quarantine.
The magnitude and speed of class closures in this mid-November surprised. “We had never known that,” relate parents as teachers. Until the spring of 2021, there were three positive cases in a class to cause closure.
All territories are affected
In Paris, closed classes increased from 134 to 356 in a week, says the town hall. The school of 12-14, rue d’Alésia, in the 14 e borough, has experienced cascading closures to arrive at twelve classes in seventeen closed at the beginning of the week. “We made an excel board to follow the situation. We ended up getting lost between the closing, reopening, closing dates …” says Laetitia Jayet, representative of the parents of students and whose girl is in cm1 at this establishment.
The wave of closures has touched all territories. In the Hérault, Philippe Alberge, School Director and Departmental Representative of SE-UNSA, had never been faced with a class closure since the beginning of the pandemic, excluding confinement. There were two, one in CE2 and the other in CM1, shot across November 18 in its establishment. “Parents are worried and we do not always know how to answer them. What is the threshold to completely close a school? I do not know,” he desperate.
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