EDUCATION: Jean Castex, the Prime Minister has expressed his desire to not close the schools in France during the coronavirus Epidemic
Earlier this evening, Thursday 7th January, at 6 p.m., the Prime Minister, Jean Castex gave a press conference, where he reconfirmed his desire not to close schools.
Do not close schools to avoid dropping out
Thursday 7th January Prime Minister Jean Castex reaffirmed his desire not to close schools, during his press conference on the epidemiological situation in France. “We have had to face (…) several back to school since the start of this health crisis, with a first confinement where the schools had all been closed. We learned from this by saying that the health situation really has to be extremely serious to close schools because we know that the consequences, including health consequences, of the closing of schools, are absolutely dramatic ”.
During the first confinement, the Ministry of National Education estimated the dropout rate at 4%. It is to avoid this school dropout that the government refuses to close schools.
Strengthening of epidemiological surveillance announced
If the government refuses to close schools, Jean Castex assures us that it follows “every day, the situation of contamination clusters in schools, colleges, high schools which have already seen their operation lightened before the holidays of Christmas “. The high schools, which since the beginning of November, are at 50% of the workforce, will be able around January 20th, if the health situation allows it, to resume at 100%. Jean Castex concluded by affirming that: “the last re-entry was carried out in a completely satisfactory way” .
With the arrival of the Covid-19 variant, coming from Great Britain, the Prime Minister, Jean Castex declares that “the decision was taken, as soon as we had the first data, to strengthen epidemiological surveillance and tests in schools ”. According to the Ministry of National Education, a million antigenic tests are “ready” to be used for staff, high school and college students. Since the end of November, only 10,000 tests have been carried out in high schools
