French teachers and school personnel stage historic strike over confusing Covid-19 rules
-
Loading... - Thompson Holmes
- 13 Jan 2022
- 419 Views
- 0 Like
- 0 Comment
Coming as France's presidential election campaign gets under way ahead of an April vote, the walkout is uncomfortable for a government that has prided itself on keeping schools open to ease pressure on parents through the pandemic.
With Covid-19 cases skyrocketing among children in France, Prime Minister Jean Castex took to the airwaves Monday night to relax the school protocol, once again. Teachers and educational staff across the country were already livid over the government's pandemic response and are striking massively on Thursday.
Eleven unions are participating in the walkout, in a rare show of unity that could make for the biggest strike in decades.
The new instructions – the third set since children returned to school January 3 after the holidays – have not calmed the teachers' ire. Au contraire.
Inundated by the Omicron wave even as Delta hangs on, France's pandemic arithmetic is astounding. Nationwide, all ages combined, the country is averaging more than 280,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases daily, with more than 2.5 percent of the country testing positive last week alone.
In schools, infection rates are often worse. In the greater Paris area, where Omicron hit first and fastest, some 5 percent of primary- and middle-school children were confirmed to be infected last week; among 15- to 17-year-olds, the figure was over 6 percent. Meanwhile, millions of primary school pupils remain unvaccinated amid a ploddingly slow start to the campaign for 5- to 11-year-olds.
Healthcare and education personnel have clamoured for better protection against Covid-19 in schools, demanding high-quality face masks and carbon-dioxide detectors in every school to aid ventilation against a predominantly airborne virus. They've also asked to return to the protocol in place in the autumn, which set off circuit-breaking class closures from the first confirmed case.
But their demands have mostly fallen on deaf ears. Since cases began rapidly rising in December, the French government has baffled experts by relaxing the Covid-19 school protocol again and again.
Judging by the unusually broad response to calls for strike action on January 13, school personnel, too, have reached a breaking point: Unions both radical and moderate, representing a wide variety of school workers, including teachers, aides, school principals and school inspectors, in primary and secondary schools, in the public and private sectors, have banded together to down tools on Thursday.
One major parents' federation, the FCPE, even called on parents to pull their children out of class to mark the day of protest. Snuipp-FSU, the leading union of primary school personnel forecast that 75 percent of primary school teachers will strike and that half of those schools will be closed.
The strike "demonstrates the growing despair in schools", Snuipp-FSU said in a Tuesday statement announcing the strike.
They complain that their members are unable to teach properly, are not adequately protected against coronavirus infection and frequently hear about changes to health precautions via the media rather than from higher-ups. Read More…
