SCHOOL COVID PROTOCOL. The Ministry of Education announced on August 23 that at the start of the school year the health protocol will be at the “base”, that is to say at the minimum level. Wearing a mask, contact tracing, details of sanitary measures.
[Mis à jour le 23 août 2022 à 11h57] For the third year in a row, the start of the school year will take place according to a health protocol and we now know the details of the measures that will be applied in schools on September 1. Good news for children, the Ministry of Education has announced to the unions that the “base of measures” is the lowest level of the protocol will be put in place, according to The Parisian this Tuesday, August 23, 2022. The choice of the protocol at its minimum level was recorded by the General Directorate of Health several days ago adds the Ile-de-France newspaper and allows all students to reconnect with school face-to-face from the first day of class.
The basic measures of the health protocol at school merely repeat the general health recommendations concerning the wearing of masks and other safety measures in schools and therefore correspond to a normal situation. The absence of restrictions or specific measures also concerns physical education and sports lessons. However, the ministry has told union representatives that for teachers who wish to be more considerate, surgical masks and self-tests will be provided to academies at least until All Saints Day.
Regarding the new health protocol at school, the Ministry of Education wanted to be reassuring from the summer and explained that the device is intended to apply in “consistency with the rules applicable outside the school environment” . In addition to the “base” level which will therefore be applied at the start of the school year, the protocol can respond to different levels of alert and thresholds of vigilance, it allows schools to adapt to the epidemic context by following a graduated health framework. It is no longer necessary to go through the complex rules of contact cases and reports, widely questioned in the past. Check out the three below levels of the health protocol against Covid at school.
The three levels of measurement “activatable depending on the context”, as explained to AFP Marie-Hélène Piquemal, the national vice-president of Snalc, will allow schools to simply follow the evolution of the epidemic, without obey specific and binding rules. What are these vigilance thresholds?
- the level 1 : it is equivalent to moderate vigilance. In this case, the lessons are held face-to-face, which does not prevent the educational teams from being required to find out about the latest recommendations on barrier gestures by encouraging students to respect them, but also by limiting to the strict minimum large gatherings (i.e. open days or fairs, but not gatherings of students from different classes).
- the level 2 : it corresponds to increased vigilance. Despite the classes that will remain face-to-face, the reinforcement of barrier gestures will be required to prevent the mixing of students by level. In addition, the practical modalities in physical education and sports (EPS) will be adapted to limit a possible spread of the virus.
- the level 3 : it signals a very unfavorable evolution of the health context. It will trigger a reception doctrine in high school, which can switch to hybrid education. Distance education will then be a possibility left to each city or department. At the national level, a strengthening of restrictive measures, in particular via a limitation of physical and sporting activities, will be expected from teaching managers.
Finally, wearing a mask in schools is also changing. From now on, we will observe “an alignment of the school with the general population. There is no specific rule in the school environment, no more specific policy of tests at school, nor specific contact tracing device in the school environment. “, specifies the Ministry of National Education.
However, the new health protocol for the start of the 2022 school year has not been fully refined. Local authorities and parents’ federations must still be consulted on this protocol from July 20. In addition, it will not be definitively decided until the end of August, a few days before the start of the school year, which may require subsequent modifications. In fact, the determination of the level of the protocol meets several criteria, and in particular the qualitative (nature of the variant) and quantitative (hospital situation)” analysis, as explained by Marie-Hélène Piquemal, national vice-president of Snalc (National union of high schools, colleges, schools and higher education). thus specifies that the determination of the level of protocol “is based on the Council for Defense and National Security (CDSN), on the proposal of the health authorities and the Ministry of Education”.
The other key measure of this new version is the 10-day deadline provided for the implementation of the transition from one level to another, which should allow educational teams to adapt to different scenarios. This is a big change compared to the previous protocol, which remained very vague on the deadlines and the room for maneuver of the teaching teams in situations of epidemic recovery. According to Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of Snes-FSU, the first primary school union: “This will allow the teams to have more time to adapt on the pitch. It will be much more effective than the hasty announcements made this year” (comments reported by The cross). However, we do not know the precise criteria that will make it possible to pass from one level to another; everything will depend on the epidemiological indicators.
While the previous health protocol provided for a range of measures relating to the reporting and tracing of contact cases, but also to the wearing of a mask under certain conditions, this time everything seems simpler. Regarding the wearing of a mask, the protocol for the start of the next school year provides for “an alignment of the school with the general population”, as explained by Sophie Vénétitay, general secretary of the SNES-FSU (main secondary education union). Wearing a mask is thus not included in any of the alert levels or vigilance thresholds: it can only be reimposed by order of the health authorities at national level. “There are no specific rules in schools, no more specific school testing policies,” she explained. In addition, if positive students Covid-19 will always be required to isolate themselves (according to the health rules in force), there will be no isolation provided for contact cases, who will not even be required to be tested. Thus, no specific contact tracing in the school environment or saliva test campaigns for this back to school.
“School is no longer a world apart”. The sentence is signed Sophie Vénétitay, the general secretary of the SNES-FSU (the main secondary education union), who spoke on the airwaves in mid-July about the evolution of the health protocol. Referring to “constructive exchanges” with the ministry, she was pleased that “the reality on the ground” had finally “been heard” by the government. For Guislaine David, the spokesperson for the SNUipp-FSU teachers’ union who raised the subject on France Info on July 13, this protocol is also much more concrete, in particular in the sense that it will not “require” an “exceptional administrative burden”. She is delighted to no longer have to live with all the “announcements to be made to parents”, but also the pressure of applying the protocol.
In fact, the ten-day period between the announcement of a protocol and its implementation date is a godsend for schools that had to follow singular and complex rules for almost two years. As such, Vincent Loustau, the federal secretary of the Sgen-CFDT recognized that this new protocol was “more pragmatic and applicable” than those imposed during the first five-year term. He entrusted to Echoes the difficulties posed by “contact tracing” and “mixing”. From now on, the teachers will have no other rules to follow than those which will be in force for the whole of the population… What to be relieved.