User:Amgine/Reboot/Teachers in the streets of France over spread of Covid in schools

13 Jan 2022

Educators, staff, and parents staged a one-day grève nationale, a national strike, about changing and confusing government rules regarding Covid. Tens of thousands are reported to have been in the streets in cities across the country.

“We had reached such a level of exasperation, tiredness, and anger that we didn’t have any other option but to organise a strike to send a strong message to the government,” Elisabeth Allain-Moreno, national secretary of the SE-Unsa teachers’ union, told the Guardian Newspaper.

Unions and the government disputed about how large the strike was, with SNUIPP estimating 62%-75% of teachers supported the demonstration, against government reports that 27% of teachers were on strike.

In 2021 France fleshed out a 'social contract' approach to Covid-19 in part described in a paper in The Lancet addressing SARS-COV-2's emerging immune evasion, whose authors include Franck Chauvin, president of France's High Council of Public Health. In the contract the public would be vaccinated, and use of a vaccination passport would regain some levels of social activity - bars and restaurants, for example, would be allowed to partially reopen.

But Omicron has upset the government's balancing act, and a flurry of responses - two changes to new testing and isolation rules have rolled out to schools since January 6 - have left teachers angered and confused. On Monday Prime Minister Jean Castex said rules would be relaxed for students and their parents, in response to a wave of anger over instant school closures and testing only at pharmacies.

Since returning to school in January, students have become more likely than adults to develop Covid in France. Teaching unions argue the government's disorganized and reactive approach is failing to protect students, or to educate them, with 10,000 school or class closures to date. They report a lack of ventilation equipment, safety gear, and staffing shortages as schools resort to closure when there are not enough faculty to cover the number of instructors out ill.

M Castex announced he would be meeting Thursday night with representatives of the unions about their concerns.