PARIS/VELIZY - Across France, primary
school pupils on Tuesday sat at least a metre apart in small
classes and listened to teachers in masks on their first day
back after two months of home-schooling during the coronavirus
lockdown.
The lessons, though, did not cover maths or grammar, but
hygiene amid a public health emergency: wash your hands, don't
touch your face and keep away from each other.
That was the new reality as some 1.5 million elementary and
primary pupils - roughly one in every four - returned to class
as France tentatively emerges from lockdown.
But with less than two months of the academic year left,
some parents, teachers and their unions have questioned the
wisdom of reopening schools when the virus continues to
circulate, especially in the greater Paris region.
The related COVID-19 disease has already killed more than
26,000 people in France.
"The school that the kids are going to discover will have
little to do with the school that they left behind," said David,
a teacher at a primary school in Paris' western 16th district
who gave his first name only.
"It's more like a nursery to let the parents go back to
work."
The government wants to ease lockdown restrictions to
resuscitate the economy and says the rate of infection has
slowed sufficiently.
RESISTANCE
Unions and opposition parties have pointed to the risk that
COVID-19 infections will pick up again, particularly in places
where distancing is difficult, such as schools.
"Why have we started with the youngest children to end the
lockdown when we know they'll be the hardest ones to make apply
protective measures?" said Francette Popineau, chief of the
primary school union, on FranceInfo radio.
Secondary school children are not due back until May 25, but
local authorities tasked with drawing up safety plans have
concerns.
Recently, more than 300 mayors from the Paris region,
including the capital's mayor Anne Hidalgo, warned against
rushing children back, as well as the financial cost for smaller
towns and the threat of legal action if pupils fell ill.
One of them, Pascal Thevenot, mayor of Vélizy-Villacoublay,
told Reuters it would be difficult to impose some of the
sanitary measures outlined in a 54-page government document.
"I'm not sure the people who wrote this have had children,"
he said. "I see this as an economic decision rather than an
education decision."
Many parents are still keeping their children at home.
Others, though, need to return to work or consider whether the
benefits to a child's mental well-being from returning to school
outweigh the risk of infection.
"I'm not too stressed, I explained to her the protective
measures and I had to go back to work anyway," Sandrine Delarue,
a kindergarten assistant, said as she dropped her 10-year-old
daughter Clara outside Vélizy's Mozart school.
As for Clara, there was no hesitation in going back.
"It won't be the same school, but at least it will make the
virus pass," Clara said. "I'm happy to be back, to see my
teacher, my friends and to learn in class."
Reuters