The day after the announcements providing for school closures, in areas subject to power cuts, the teachers’ unions were received, this Friday, December 2, at the Ministry of National Education. Pap Ndiaye had already warned this Thursday that there would be “no school in the morning” in the regions that will suffer scheduled and targeted power cuts this winter.
These cuts are planned, from January, on three time slots, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. load shedding, will have the consequence that the return of pupils on the day concerned will take place at the beginning of the afternoon, with undoubtedly a meal which will nevertheless be provided for the pupils who are in the canteen”, added the Minister of Education. national.
No area offloaded twice in the same day
This Friday, the ministry clarified to the unions the protocol that will be applied even if the practical details will be officially detailed next week. If the schools will be closed in the morning in the impacted areas, the extracurricular will close earlier if the cut takes place between 6 and 8 p.m. No zone will be relieved twice in the same day. On the other hand, the communication of these cuts could quickly become a problem. Indeed, if we stick to what has been announced, the regions concerned will be informed the day before of the load shedding.
At 3 p.m., we will know which area is affected and finally at 5 p.m., via the Enedis site (monecowatt.fr), we will be able to find out which schools will be affected and parents will then be informed. Finally, at 7 p.m., the prefect will communicate to the population. Not easy to organize in such a short period of time, especially for parents who cannot telecommute.
A school may not be load shedding twice in the same day, but it may suffer up to three load shedding as long as the power cuts last. A figure which, according to the Ministry of National Education, would only be an “order of magnitude” given as an indication. “At this time, no one knows if a school will be closed once, twice, three times or even never, specifies the institution. The idea is above all that these sheddings are rotating and have a limited impact so as not to disrupt the lessons. This will be the case for boarding schools which must continue to be classy. The latter will remain open and connected to their security system which theoretically, and if it works correctly, has an autonomy of 5 hours.
Finally, priority staff, whose children can be welcomed in schools that have remained open, will be smaller than during the Covid period. These will mainly be agents working in hospitals, prisons, internal security… “There are a lot of blind spots in what has been announced and we are very worried about the ministry’s ability to cope, underlines Stéphane Crochet general secretary of the SE-UNSA trade union. We only look at the situation through the prism of power cuts, but these are difficulties that will accumulate: transport, childcare, restarting the current… etc”.