Tribune. The school remains open, but the classes are emptying: for lack of robust prevention and anticipation measures, the establishments are in severe disorganization and, four days before the start of the school year, 47,453 confirmed cases of pupils and 5 have been declared. 631 of staff. At 1is January, the incidence rate of 15-17 year olds had exceeded 3,000 per 100,000, in two regions already; back to school two (out of four) of the protocol for this age group, with the brewing in the establishments, has made it possible to propagate very effectively the contaminations.
The new protocol, presented on the eve of the start of the school year, will only last three days until, following the shortage of self-test stocks, the dizzying number of contaminations and class closures, a new alleviation, quite paradoxical, intervenes.
High-risk activities without a mask, such as college sports or water sports, are still permitted. Sports practice in the swimming pool, when it is maintained, remains compulsory and subject to sanctions for students whose parents want to avoid exposure, without protection, to a pathogenic biological agent of level three, out of four.
New record of hospitalizations
Doctrine trumps reason: Classes should remain open, even without teachers. To cope with the absences of staff, sick or isolated, the Académie de Paris has set itself the objective of reaching 100 to 120 recruitments, among students. “Who are looking into this profession, with at least a license”, most “Also parents of students, at master’s level”.
At the same time, every day a new record of hospitalizations of children and adolescents is broken, as the Minister of Health announced to the National Assembly: on January 7, according to Public Health France, 335 children of less than 10 years and 229 between 10 years and 19 years were hospitalized (respectively, an increase of 40% and 90% in ten days). A total of 91 were in critical care. Pediatric hospitals, including Necker, announce having to deprogram non-urgent interventions, but whose repeated cancellations end up having repercussions on the health of child patients.
It is clear that the school is no longer able to guarantee neither education nor health protection. Under these conditions, can we continue to say that school is “good” for children?
The school remained open to the virus, so it closed its doors to very many children, in an untimely and disorganized manner. In 2021, if the national education had deployed the necessary technological and human resources, a one or two week distance education, the time to implement the necessary measures, accompanied by a social policy for disadvantaged children, would surely have been less impactful, psychologically and pedagogically, than the current chaos.
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