LIVE: French teachers and school personnel protest against govt’s policy on COVID-19 measures

Ruptly is live from Paris on Thursday, January 13, as representatives of education unions demonstrate against what they say is the government’s failure to adopt a reasonable policy for schools to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many French teachers and other representatives of the education sector are also conducting a one-day strike on Thursday.

The unions are demanding from the government to provide face masks for staff, including the more protective FFP2 masks, and surgical masks for pupils, as well as CO2 captors in classrooms to monitor air purity levels.

Masks have been mandatory for pupils and teachers in French schools since 2020, with a short pause in a number of places amid low infection rates in autumn 2021 before they were brought back.

On Monday, French Prime Minister Jean Castex announced that students would be allowed to do self-tests instead of a PCR test if one of their classmates tests positive for coronavirus, as a spike in COVID-19 infections made the previous health protocol in the education sector too complicated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0FpjRQSZbY