2023-07-27 16:48:02
The government announced Thursday, July 27 the creation of a “pass colo”, for certain families. What, perhaps, to stimulate attendance at summer camps, which has been declining since the end of the 1990s.
A “colos pass” will be put in place next summer, announced Aurore Bergé, the new Minister of Solidarity and the Family, Thursday July 27. Aid of 250 to 300 euros paid by CAF to allow parents to send their CM2 children to summer camps. After a golden age in the 80s and 90s, these stays for children and teenagers are now experiencing a drop in attendance.
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According to a parliamentary report published in 2013, in 1995, 14% of children and adolescents aged 5 to 19 had taken one of these stays. More than fifteen years later, in 2011, it was half as much.
Shorter and more expensive stays
The average duration of a colony was just over two weeks in 1994, compared to ten days in 2013. This is explained first of all by the price. Still according to the same parliamentary report, a day in summer camp costs on average 63 euros, against 35 euros for a day in a leisure center and 15 euros a day in scout camps.
According to sociologist Magalie Bacou, a researcher at the Regional Labor Institute of Midi-Pyrénées, in the 1990s, organizing a summer camp has become more expensive, due to stricter safety standards and stagnating subsidies. The organizers have therefore reoriented themselves towards a more affluent clientele, by offering thematic summer camps: astronomy, surfing, horse riding, more expensive stays for parents.
There are also fewer places to host holiday camps today since these buildings, which are expensive to maintain and bring up to standard, have been sold by their owners, whether private or public (municipalities, associations). Finally, because of the tightening of safety standards, it is also more complicated to find animators to supervise stays.
Weak rebound since the health crisis
There were only 670,000 summer camp departures in the 2019-2020 school year in France, compared to just over 1.4 million the previous year, a drop of more than half, according to A report published last January by the Injep, the National Institute of Youth and Popular Education. Since then, attendance has gradually risen but is struggling to reach its pre-pandemic level. There were just over 1.2 million departures for the 2021-2022 school year.
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