In the Simone Veil high school in Valbonne, March 25, 2021. – SYSPEO / SIPA
It’s the big day for high school and college students. A week after school starts, they too will begin to return to their classrooms on Monday. It is also today that the end of travel restrictions begins, the first step in the progressive deconfinement of the country initiated by the government.
After two weeks of distance learning, interspersed with two weeks of leave, high school students return to the half-gauge, with an alternation of face-to-face and remote classes. For colleges, the resumption takes place in person, except for 4th and 3rd year students of the fifteen departments most affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, also constrained to the half-gauge. For the occasion, Prime Minister Jean Castex and Minister of National Education Jean-Michel Blanquer are expected in the morning in a vocational school in Laxou, on the outskirts of Nancy.
Sign of the fragility of the epidemic situation, Jean-Michel Blanquer has kept the very strict health protocol in place before the break in recent weeks: the closure of a class will be ordered as soon as a single positive case is identified. But “if the situation improves, we could, for example, consider closing classes again from three cases” or “reestablishing entire classes for all high school and college students”, said the minister in an interview with the Sunday newspaper.
Deconfinement in four steps
This return to the classroom and the lifting of travel restrictions mark the start of the deconfinement in four stages desired by Emmanuel Macron. Its next step is scheduled for May 19, with the limited reopening of shops, cinemas, museums, theaters and terraces of bars and restaurants, as well as the delay from 7 to 9 p.m. of the entry into force of the curfew.
On June 9, this curfew must be further delayed to 11 p.m. and cafes and restaurants will be able to accommodate, on a limited basis, indoor customers. The total lifting of the restrictions is scheduled for June 30, on the eve of the holidays. But, as pointed out by the Head of State and his ministers, this schedule remains subject to changes in the health situation.