While temperatures have fallen quite low for the season in many cities in France, some schools had temperatures of 11 degrees in the classrooms when welcoming children back from vacation on Monday, November 7. Parents left with their children so that they did not fall ill.
The heating missed its return to school
After the heat waves of October, the cold returned after the All Saints holidays, and many establishments had not prepared for the drop in temperatures, due to the energy crisis, marked by energy sobriety. An icy cold therefore welcomed the children inside the classrooms this back-to-school week, with temperatures sometimes dropping as low as 11 degrees! “Even with the coat, we are frozen! It’s colder inside than outside, said parents from the Clément-Marot school, in the Hauts de Rouen, who saw many parents leave with their children. The school itself had suggested that the parents come and pick up the children at noon, as the cold risked aggravating the students’ state of health. According to the school, the responsibility is that of the Town Hall, which had not responded to reminders to restore the heating. Mayor Nicolas Mayer-Rossignol was arrested by parents on Twitter, who denounce the same situation in other schools in the city. According to Florence Hérouin-Leautey, deputy mayor of Rouen in charge of schools and early childhood, the restoration of heating was scheduled for Tuesday, November 8.
Impossible conditions for learning
This type of very unfavorable conditions for good learning has also been denounced in Limoges, where the director of the nursery school Leon Blum denounces an unbearable cold: “Children can’t stop themselves from urinating on it, it’s so cold”she said at the microphone of morning tv. The town hall of Limoges explains that the heating was turned on last week and that there was a need for a margin time for the system to heat up. The unions point to the deterioration of these “dilapidated” premises as an explanation for such a situation at school. In the city of Évreux, it’s not just about the start of the new school year: since September, parents have been demonstrating, and last October, parents of students mobilized so that the city deigns to light the boiler of the school to heat rooms where the temperature was already oscillating between 10 and 13 degrees: “No heating, no school”could we read on banners.