Published on
Updated
Reading 2 mins.
If in the context of energy shortage, hospitals should be spared this winter from power cuts, this is not the case for schools which may suffer the consequences. What protocol is in place for your children in the event of load shedding in your residential area? We take stock.
Will we soon experience regular two-hour power cuts in the heart of winter? It is a probability. In the columns of Sunday newspaper on December 3, Agnès Pannier Runacher, Minister of Energy Transition assured that “the Government is doing its utmost to limit the impact of any cuts”while trying to temporize: “Shedding is the last resort”. But if the cuts are not planned in the hospitals, nor in “places related to law enforcement or firefighters”, the schools would already have a defined protocol… Which does not necessarily look very practical.
Schools closed in the morning in the event of a planned cut
From next January, power outages may take place in schools (schools and colleges) in the event of high voltages on the electrical network. In this case, the cuts will be temporary and will last two hours over well-defined time slots: 8 a.m.-10 a.m., 10 a.m.-12 p.m. or 6 p.m.-8 p.m. Note that each school can only be subject to one load shedding per day, so that no closure lasts a whole day.
Every day, therefore, at 5 p.m., the site monecowatt.fr will thus inform the establishments and the parents of the schools concerned. The information will be announced the day before for the next day. In the event of a power cut, schools will be closed only in the morning. The children of staff considered to be a priority (hospital agents, gendarmes, police officers) will be welcomed in other establishments which are not closed. However, college and high school boarding schools will remain open in the evening, even if there is a break between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.
A protocol that already has flaws in its application
Internally, the announcement of this protocol is already making people cringe. At the microphone of BFM TV Sunday, December 4, Didier Georges, headmaster and elected national SNPDEN-UNSA feared a discrepancy in the way information will travel to students and their parents: “We will have the information at 5 p.m. the day before. And afterwards, of course, the Swiss army knives that are the principals or the principals will have to, thanks to the digital tools at our disposal (sms, email in Pronote), warn the families”. With the problem of reaching or not the concerned in time: “it does not guarantee that all families will be permanently connected and will necessarily have the information” he regretted. In particular because of the digital divide that persists between families.
Late information should also make it more difficult for parents to find childcare arrangements at the last moment. Hoping that this does not happen too often: but according to the protocol, a school may suffer a maximum of three cuts this winter.