France scales down school Covid rules ahead of teachers' strike

France eased Covid rules in schools on Tuesday after a record number of infections shut down thousands of classes, saddling parents and teachers with the logistical hassle of repetitive testing. Several unions have called for a strike on Thursday.

A health worker explains to Suzanne, 5, how she will get a nasal swab, at a mobile Covid testing site in Albigny-sur-Saone, outside Lyon, on 4 January, 2022. AP - Laurent Cipriani

Prime Minister Jean Castex told France 2 television on Monday that more than 10,000 classes – 2 percent of the total – had to be cancelled because of coronavirus outbreaks, adding the government would not "shut down the schools nor the country".

France has suffered more than 125,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, and on Monday recorded 93,896 new coronavirus cases as the highly contagious Omicron variant drives up daily infections.

Under the first change, from Tuesday, parents will no longer be obliged to pick up their child immediately for Covid testing if they are a contact case.

Home-testing will be deemed sufficient in such cases rather than testing at an officially approved site, such as a pharmacy, with parents signing a certificate to confirm the result.

The test kits, available from pharmacies, will be free upon presentation of a letter from the school.

'undescribable Mess'

France's biggest primary teachers' union the SNUipp-FSU, which denounced the "indescribable mess" in the school system and "a strong feeling of abandonment and anger among the staff", has called for a national strike on Thursday.

Most of the country's other teaching unions have signed up to the proposal.

SNUipp-FSU secretary-general Guislaine David said she was unimpressed by Castex's announcement.

"It displays total contempt for the teachers who are on the ground. This will not at all reduce the number of contaminations at school," David said.

"On the contrary, it will multiply them tenfold, because a certificate on the honour of the parents is now sufficient."

« Après cette intervention au 20 h de France 2, ceux qui hésitaient vont avoir encore plus de raison de faire grève »​, réagit Guislaine David, secrétaire générale du ⁦@SNUipp_FSU⁩ , le premier syndicat d’enseignants du primaire. #Greve13Janvier https://t.co/K2UhyDwhIs

— Guislaine David (@guislainedavid) January 10, 2022

Parents to join 

"Once again it's not in the children's interest," Carla Dugault, the co-president of the FCPE union representing parents and teachers told France Info.

"We would've preferred to see saliva tests for the younger students," she said, indicating that rapid testing at home still involved a nasal swab which is often uncomfortable for the child.

The FCPE "doesn't want to see schools closed" she explains, but "let's keep them open in the safest possible way" indicating that for that to happen, schools would need more help to be able to carry out their own tests onsite.

The parents union has decided to march side by side with teachers at the rally planned for Thursday.

"This is an historic event to say 'stop, you've gone too far'. Everyone is exhausted and very angry," Dugault said.

Inequality

"We're going to go from open schools with no students, to open schools with contaminated kids," warns epidemiologist Mahmoud Zureik.

The professor at Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, west of Paris, says the new protocol will simply increase the disparity between families who can and can't keep up with the rules. 

"I wonder how many parents are going to download the document and go and pick up the tests? How many of them will actually carry out the tests properly without fully understanding how important this process is," he told France Info on Tuesday.

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"We're going to see inequality on a social level and on a health level," he added, particularly in poorer areas where contaminations tend to be higher. 

"Efforts haven't really been made to make schools safer places."

Even though coronavirus has proven to have less serious effects on children, there are 73 children between the ages of 0 and 9 in intensive care in France, and more than 300 in hospital.

(with wires)