“We are very concerned that the school will crack down, quite simply because we will no longer have enough staff to welcome the children”, warns the co-secretary general and spokesperson of the SNUipp-FSU union Guislaine David on Thursday January 6 on franceinfo, before the national education unions are received by their minister in charge Jean-Michel Blanquer by videoconference in the afternoon. The SNUipp-FSU will ask him to return to the rule according to which a class closes as soon as a case of Covid-19 is discovered in the students.
franceinfo: Jean-Michel Blanquer says that 7% of teachers are absent at the moment, in particular because of the Covid-19, and that this is likely to rise to 15%. Do you have the same numbers?
We do not have the figures because the ministry does not report them to us, but we know that we have a large number of teachers who, since the start of the school year, have been absent. When a teacher is absent and he is not replaced, since there are no more means of replacement, and since the children cannot be shuffled, the class is closed. What is astonishing in the figures announced by Jean-Michel Blanquer is that we do not know what he is based on to give this rate of 15%.
“I think he has a crystal ball to run the ministry, because you can’t tell who will be out in the next few days and who will be sick.”
Guislaine David, spokesperson for the SNUipp-FSU teachers’ unionto franceinfo
These are cases of Covid-19, patients who cannot go to school. We also have people who are in contact and who have to go for testing. They can have a day off because sometimes it takes a while to get tested in pharmacies or labs.
Many parents of students say it is a “mess” in schools right now. Do you share the same observation?
Yes, there is some mess. What we experience in schools is a gas factory, because we must report cases of Covid-19 to parents, encourage them to go for tests, bring them back with negative tests, recover them, then recover these sworn statements on D + 2 and D + 4, saying that the children have done self-tests. It is also necessary to manage the absences of teachers, and those of non-teaching staff in the municipalities. Because in the schools, we also have Atsem, cleaning staff, staff who run the lunchtime canteen. It starts to get complicated. There is a strong fear that the school will be cracked, quite simply because we will no longer have enough staff to welcome the children. The schools will be open without staff.
What are you going to say to Jean-Michel Blanquer during your meeting this Thursday?
We will ask him to come back to the rule according to which we close the class for seven days as soon as there is a positive case. The children are put in solitary confinement for seven days. This is what happens for college children who are not vaccinated. They are placed in solitary confinement for seven days when they are in contact. We ask to come back to this rule to make it possible to avoid contamination on D + 3, D + 5. We really have to go back to a stricter rule. It would avoid contamination. In other words, the 30,000 cases that we can have per day, we might not have had them if we had closed the schools. There, we have classes that sometimes operate with four or five students while they come back with a negative test.
“Does it work well for our classes to have four or five students a day, then 10, then maybe 15?”
Guislaine David, spokesperson for the SNUipp-FSU teachers’ unionto franceinfo
We operate in a very chaotic fashion. We are also asking for protections for teachers since we are still not protected by surgical masks.
Jean-Michel Blanquer says he has distributed 160 million masks since the start of the pandemic. This makes, in theory, 150 masks per teacher. Is it correct ?
Yes, but the masks distributed by National Education are not surgical or FFP2 masks. These are fabric masks which are sometimes not adapted to the shape of the teacher’s face, and therefore which cannot be used. These are washable masks. No one uses this type of fabric mask anymore. So the teachers provide themselves with masks. Sometimes FFP2 to be better protected. In kindergarten, we have teachers who face children who are not masked, who are often sick, and therefore many kindergarten teachers use FFP2 masks. Contrary to what Jean-Michel Blanquer says, it is possible to teach all day long with an FFP2 mask, so you have to be able to have at least one for teachers who want to teach with FFP2. Without even talking about those, I think that all that remains is the National Education which is not provided with surgical masks.