The calendar for the next school holidays could be adapted in order to reduce the circulation of the virus in France. Jean-François Delfraissy, Chairman of the Scientific Council, offers two options.
Will the February school holidays be maintained on the dates planned or extended? This is one of the many questions to be answered by the Defense Council which meets on Wednesday, while the Covid-19 variants raise fears of a worsening of the health situation in France in the coming weeks.
Whitening remains prudent
If Jean-Michel Blanquer said last week, on RTL, that the holidays were “intended to be on the dates planned” and that, as usual, they “will last two weeks”, he was also careful. The Minister of National Education has, in fact, added that this “can still evolve depending on the situation”.
For now, the spread of the coronavirus in schools remains “on a kind of plateau”, he said, before ensuring that there may be contamination, but that it remains “limited by compared to the general situation “.
According to the latest point released by the Ministry of Education on Friday, 371 classes are currently closed out of a total of 528,400 and 10,003 students have tested positive in the last seven days out of more than 12.4 million.
Two proposals from the Scientific Council
Faced with the evolution of the epidemic, Jean-François Delfraissy recommended, Sunday on our set, to “adapt the school holidays”. The President of the Scientific Council proposes either to extend them by one week or to group them together. This will make it possible, in parallel with a possible confinement, to reduce the presence at the school and to “find themselves at the beginning of March in better conditions to reopen the schools and especially to monitor them”, he said.
France is divided into three zones with different calendars for winter holidays:
- the zone A (academies of Besançon, Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Dijon, Grenoble, Limoges, Lyon, Poitiers) must be on vacation from February 6 to 22
- the zone B (academies of Aix-Marseille, Amiens, Lille, Nancy-Metz, Nantes, Nice, Normandy, Orléans-Tours, Reims, Rennes, Strasbourg) must be on vacation from February 20 to March 8
- the zone C (academies of Créteil, Montpellier, Paris, Toulouse, Versailles) must be on vacation from February 13 to March 1.
Extend or combine vacations
Scenario 1 advocated by Jean-François Delfraissy, extending the holidays. If they are actually lengthened by a week, they would end March 1 for zone A, March 8 for zone C and March 15 for zone B.
Scenario 2 advocated by Jean-François Delfraissy, grouping together the holidays. If the government chose this option, they would be spread over four weeks for the three zones, i.e. from February 6 to March 8.
“The school question is central”
If an adaptation of school holidays can reduce social interactions, and therefore the circulation of the virus, it still poses organizational questions as much for schools as for parents.
Rodrigo Arenas, co-president of the Federation of Parents’ Councils (FCPE), interviewed this Monday on BFMTV, does not close the door to this option, assuring that it is necessary “to consider all situations”.
“Today we are paying for the inability to think otherwise. (…) We must rethink the school calendar, the expectations for students and put ourselves at the service of those who are the most vulnerable. The question of school is central because it is a place of mixing, a place of contaminations. School is a social place and as such it cannot be excluded from a more global reflection on how we are fighting the Covid-19. “
The presence of the variants in France makes the situation uncertain and calls for anticipation. “Caution is required in relation to an epidemic that we do not control and scientific data which are still under study”, he added.
Bruno Bobkiewicz, national secretary of the National Union of National Education Management Staff (SNPDEN), also emphasizes on our antenna that a change in the school holiday calendar “cannot be done in haste”. “We need time to organize ourselves. (…) We must be able to work on it”, he pleaded.
