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EDUCATION

MAP: The areas of France that are scrapping mask requirements in schools

From Monday, primary school children in these 47 French départements will no longer have to wear a mask in class.

Published: 30 September 2021 09:23 CEST
Updated: 4 October 2021 08:44 CEST
French primary school children may no longer need to wear a mask.
French primary school children may no longer need to wear a mask. Photo: Pascal Guyot/AFP

As Covid rates continue to fall in France, with the beginning of the school year in September showing no effect on case rates, plans are being made to gradually ease health restrictions.

The government announced on September 22nd that primary school children will no longer have to wear masks in areas that have a stable incidence rate of less than 50 cases per 100,000 people.

On Thursday it published the full list of 47 départements where this will apply from Monday, October 4th.

They are:

  • Aisne
  • Allier
  • Ardennes
  • Aveyron
  • Calvados
  • Cantal
  • Charente-Maritime
  • Corrèze
  • Côte-d’Or
  • Côtes-d’Armor
  • Creuse
  • Deux-Sèvres
  • Dordogne
  • Eure
  • Finistère
  • Gers
  • Haute-Loire
  • Haute-Marne
  • Haute-Saône
  • Indre
  • Indre-et-Loire
  • Isère
  • Landes
  • Loir-et-Cher
  • Loire
  • Loire-Atlantique
  • Loiret
  • Lozère
  • Maine-et-Loire
  • Manche
  • Marne
  • Meurthe-et-Moselle
  • Meuse
  • Morbihan
  • Nièvre
  • Orne
  • Pas-de-Calais
  • Saône-et-Loire
  • Sarthe
  • Seine-Maritime
  • Somme
  • Tarn
  • Tarn-et-Garonne
  • Vendée
  • Vienne
  • Vosges
  • Yonne

Masks will remain compulsory for older children in collège and lycée, and primary school teachers and other members of staff in contact with pupils will also continue wearing a mask.

The SNUipp-FSU, France’s largest primary school teachers’ union, said the measure “demonstrates once again the incoherence and short-term thinking in the management of the health crisis in schools”, in a press release published on Thursday.

“Incidence rates in the general population will be taken as the reference when the rate for 6- to 10-year-olds, who do not have the protection of vaccination […] is far superior, and well above the alert level of 50 [cases per 100,000 inhabitants] in these very same ‘green’ départements. In these conditions, removing the only protective measure in schools is worrying.”

The education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has also announced a trial scheme to keep classes open if there is a single Covid case diagnosed.

It comes as the number of classes closed due to Covid cases shows a steady fall, but the idea will be tested in selected areas first before it becomes policy.

The government has also discussed scrapping the health passport in areas where case rates are low, although this has not been confirmed.

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EDUCATION

Sweden’s Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

Sweden's opposition Social Democrats have called for a total ban on the establishment of new profit-making free schools, in a sign the party may be toughening its policies on profit-making in the welfare sector.

Published: 18 April 2024 16:09 CEST
Sweden's Social Democrats call for ban on new free schools

“We want the state to slam on the emergency brakes and bring in a ban on establishing [new schools],” the party’s leader, Magdalena Andersson, said at a press conference.

“We think the Swedish people should be making the decisions on the Swedish school system, and not big school corporations whose main driver is making a profit.” 

Almost a fifth of pupils in Sweden attend one of the country’s 3,900 primary and secondary “free schools”, first introduced in the country in the early 1990s. 

Even though three quarters of the schools are run by private companies on a for-profit basis, they are 100 percent state funded, with schools given money for each pupil. 

This system has come in for criticism in recent years, with profit-making schools blamed for increasing segregation, contributing to declining educational standards and for grade inflation. 

In the run-up to the 2022 election, Andersson called for a ban on the companies being able to distribute profits to their owners in the form of dividends, calling for all profits to be reinvested in the school system.  

READ ALSO: Sweden’s pioneering for-profit ‘free schools’ under fire 

Andersson said that the new ban on establishing free schools could be achieved by extending a law banning the establishment of religious free schools, brought in while they were in power, to cover all free schools. 

“It’s possible to use that legislation as a base and so develop this new law quite rapidly,” Andersson said, adding that this law would be the first step along the way to a total ban on profit-making schools in Sweden. 

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