It may seem strange to consider the impact on the School of influenza A (H1N1, often called swine flu). Arises-is there the same question for the seasonal flu that affects in France nearly 2 million people and causes 2000 deaths? Are there questions about the consequences of other diseases on the School and its operation? Why do particularly for swine flu? Why a disruption of the educational system is it running? Which?
First, several factors legitimate to raise the flu and its impact on the education system.
* This new disease, global, mediated, spread a little more each day. In the collective unconscious it returns to the tragic epidemics of old. I know the fears that such risks to inspire people even today. When I was rector in the Auvergne, I was faced with a few isolated cases of meningitis over an area of about a quarter of a department. Repeatedly, researchers explained to the general public, media, elected officials, with supporting evidence, it was not an epidemic: the case did not come from the same virus. Nothing helped. Explanations, which were meant reassuring, only served to increase the fears of families. To the point that the Prefect had to resolve to proceed in the emergency vaccination of 150,000 children and students. The impact of a threat of epidemic resembles a "butterfly effect": it is incommensurate with the cause. Flu A qualifies for the effects of panic occur and require health authorities to take drastic measures, unprecedented over large areas and for long periods. It is almost certain that this will happen in the coming months and perhaps even from the next school year. Certainly, different scenarios are possible: we see countries that prefer not to issue any official figures on the play and discretion, while others, like England, are already concerned about the impact on GDP, fearing a down 5 points from it.
* In France, faced with few cases of influenza A, the government decided a brief closure of two or three colleges, forty schools (about 56,000 account that our country) and some summer camps. Flu emerges in various places that will grow. This will lead to public health officials to take steps to close schools (called "containment") over large areas: several schools, a whole district, while a pool, a whole department, may be wider more ... The containment has a bright future ahead of him!
* The closure of a school or a secondary school for a few days has already happened in the past for various reasons, including public health. It will happen again. The closure periods are generally short; families face with only modest public support. When these closures are long (destruction of a building by fire or explosion, as in Toulouse, for example), the authorities adopt alternative measures based on the schools and the nearest functioning. Now, tomorrow, large areas will be affected and will be neither possible nor relevant of commuting a very large number of students. The propagation time of the pandemic could last for weeks or months, the virus becoming more active, there are other alternative arrangements to be put in place. There is already talk, officially 12 weeks at least. Finally, the epidemic may come back several times and in ways more daunting.
We therefore discern the newness of this phenomenon, unprecedented in recent history of national education: all students in an area "banned from school" for several weeks several months, even more perhaps. Try to imagine what will happen and what will the ultimate consequences of our education system: As the financial crisis, it will have to withdraw from the flu!
long Alerted by researchers and public health officials, the authorities of National Education have anticipated the advent of this phenomenon and prepared a response in addition to teaching health measures that are of other officials. Let us consider the case where an entire territory would be "confined "For a long time and indeterminate. Suddenly, for the first time in its history, the education system will be in the hands of parents and students. What will they do and what will they do? What role will then National Education and how?
In France, the school (public and private) is under the control of the state. His organization is uniform throughout France. Uniformity formal, I agree, but serves as the backbone for all. Following confinement, without any preparation or parents or teachers, is another system, hybrid who will set up and operate for weeks, perhaps months. Mechanisms centralized, bureaucratic and technocratic, very indolent, will succeed the total empiricism, through a complete decentralization of the parents.
first consequence of influenza A: a severe disruption of the educational system, yet the majority of players have not yet realized.
Frankly, this will greatly enhance the existing school today, denied by many teachers and educational managers. Become essential activities around the School but that the School feigned ignorance. The spine has disappeared, the other elements already at work will take a prominent place so diverse depending on the students. While the past few decades struggling French teachers to individualize lessons, it is the parents who suddenly will.
Students will benefit from the educational productions already prepared in this perspective for several months, including CNED. They will reach them through television, radio and Internet. The "e-academy" is promised to a great success, at least initially, as it can display a quasi-monopoly that will be brief. Assuming that all families have, in the absence of access to the Internet, radio or television, the educational system will consider it fulfilled its duty and ensured its mission. Teachers, who have more students in class will be asked to make distance guidance (although they are not trained to), correction of homework, etc.. A break will rapidly from one side the students who "contented "Minimum of formal service, all in all very restrictive and the other groups who will benefit from collaborative work remotely with their teachers or other resource persons, accompanied by various forms of coaching, including those offered by Internet. Four broad categories of students, already present, stand out.
* There will be first students helped by their families, those whose future is drawn from kindergarten, which are intended to come to Polytechnic, Normal sup, Sciences Po or medicine. They are accompanied by their grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, friends, for their medium consisting of executives, teachers, lawyers, architects, engineers, etc.. These students learn primarily outside of the school, sometimes with many years ahead of the official age. Yet the school has as its greatest successes: the references in Bac, the winners of open competition, Olympics, etc.. In PISA they are better than small Finnish and Korean. For them, the containment, the change will be small. The new resources available to them through education National added to those they already use. It is not certain they would use it as they can find them culturally poor. Their community will continue as if nothing had happened, to take charge. Among them, children from wealthier families will benefit likely to go for a semester or a year of study in a country least affected by flu. I does not mention gifted students here (200 000 according to the Inspector General). Those among them who succeed in school are often identified when they pass Tray with two or three years in advance. For them, nothing will change. By cons, who, however, fail (over a third) because they are bored at school will travel to other channels I mentioned. Come again in this first class students whose families have decided not to enroll their children, but only a small percentage, a slight increase, but which may increase after the confinement. In total, this first group represents about 30% of students.
* Is a second category of students. He said there would be in France today thousands of pharmacies education. Their turnover has increased by 35% this year. It reached 2.5 billion Euros. They involve massive middle-class children, between 20% and 25% of students. While the lessons are long-standing and French parents last summer, bought 4.5 million books homework. But with the massive development of pharmacies, there has been a craft industry to mass. Because of their small size, these companies are very reactive. They stick to needs. For them, it is a matter of life or death. For example, when student orientation was singled out as a weakness of the French educational system in a short time, they launched the new product "orientation" in the form of modules. It is clear that the Boundaries, they will change their offer: first, by offering very small groups with strict sanitary rules, and secondly, by the widespread use of the possibilities of teleworking: Internet, email, SMS, webcam, telephone, collaborative tools, etc.. Youth will have no trouble using them, quite the contrary. I'm sure these pharmacies are already preparing.
While the official products of National Education issued in case of containment will be free for families. But they are developed by organizations whose reactivity is not the first quality, nor listen to users. They are the result of teams used to treat the masses, with uniform terms and impersonal. The share will be nice for the "competition" will play the card of listening and individualization. All forms of coaching will be proposed and practiced. In fact, it will be for coaches to ensure for each student, the coherence of its activities. Confined to the territory, we guess that the quilt will be all: it will be increasingly difficult to find ten students doing the same thing. This is already largely the case today for almost a quarter of students who use these pharmacies, while the teachers pretended to ignore it does not take into account. With swine flu, it will become central and teachers, placed in a peripheral location, must adapt to this completely new situation.
* Since they already do, students smaller families, turning to neighborhood associations, where they will not be closed for sanitary precautions. Those who have internet go on free sites, to meet people of good will to help them make a point (or will do it for them!). Who will monitor the student's overall when the family is not capable (broken families, absent, poorly educated ...), when its financial resources or culture will not allow him to benefit from coaching or the Internet? There will probably follow a vague distance provided by teachers. For students with little appetite for education and some encouragement from those around them, his influence will be even smaller than it is in the classroom, which is known to be low. Now we can estimate that this group represents almost 30% of our students, those whose performance in PISA, while not the lowest, are below the average for OECD countries. They will, in fact, sentenced to "self coaching" is to say, left to their own. It will take some more to those who currently can already less, or almost, because there is a fourth category.
* is the population (15% to 20%) of students in very great difficulty since the end of the Kindergarten. They read very easily and do not really feel concerned by the class. From there to ask them to repeat the school voluntarily to their homes or elsewhere and assume all the consequences ... do not forget the 180,000 students in secondary education ("only" 5.4% of students said the DEPP, in Indeed, it represents the Academy of Clermont-Ferrand!) frequently absent and end up not returning to classes, or only the back of the classroom where they spend their time texting. Often they disappear, the alleviation of their teachers, we understand why. What will these students? Who will pay? Even physically present in class, they have already left the school. Can we reasonably expect them to reorganize the outside? In addition, not all have Internet at home. While in some institutions they are few (about 2%), in others, they represent over 30% of students. Nobody wants to put it in the spotlight as the means Financial assigned to schools based on the number of students enrolled in them. Thus it is not uncommon to see a professional in a high school section for 16 students hardly opened in July with 12 registered (under multiple pressures), then only 8 present at the beginning of September and more than 4 students in November. Nobody could imagine then close it at this time of year because of insufficient numbers of students. However, influenza A will! For this fourth group of students, there is little hope that the effects of influenza A in go the direction of improving their school performance.
To summarize: the swine flu will have little negative impact on the population of students who learn well in many ways and in different places. It will change attitudes and behaviors of the two intermediate groups, perhaps in a sustainable manner and will further isolate those who were unable to find their place in the school system. The gap will widen further and teachers will discover, under duress, new trades.
If confinement continues for several months (which knows?), diversification of the actual practices of students and families will increase. The system is completely individualized gradually put in place, empirically and unregulated. On uniform, the school will become hybrid. From formal to detail, it will tend to be indescribable. Performance gaps between different groups of students, cruelly highlighted by PISA, will increase. The relationship between students and teachers become a resource among others, will change considerably. Kinds of "teaching facebook" among students will emerge, offering working between "friends" and indicating "good" teachers without addressing the other, their messages are clear. The Role of Education on national tests remain essential, but it will make them pass otherwise. If we are still wanting to ban the use of calculators (that is, in fact, handheld computers connected to the Internet), some countries have already made an opposite choice: Internet use is promoted during exams. This forces us to devise tests of a different type.
Will this change sustainable? Probably in part. To go to what? What is the role of the state? One day
containment cease and all ... will not return in the previous order. First other containments may follow. But there are more important. For weeks, students and their families have invented, built and operated another school. Of course, for primary education whose duties are as social as cognitive, families reintegrating their children, but they seek a new balance with the teachers. I can not imagine where. They differ from school to school another. The variety will reign. Parents will no longer be "on the mat" of class, according to the remark made by a Quebec delegation came to France to observe our school. To users, they become stakeholders.
In college, it will be harder to find a new equilibrium. Students will not want to give up the autonomy gained, they have used wisely or not. Pharmacies will not let go conquered markets, associations either, although they defended themselves to think in terms of market. Students will not want to interrupt the day after their Internet usage and their nomadic instruments. A larger number of parents will be taken over what their children. Suddenly placed by influenza A in the heart of the reactor, mostly they will not find themselves rejected at the door of the school and classroom. The School of the nineteenth century will be over, that of the twenty-first start its development and the educational community should tackle it. In its way, the swine flu will reform the school.
So a radical upheaval of the education system heralded by the result of influenza A.
The epidemic is worldwide. However, it will not have the same impact on the various educational systems. Existing situation is different from one country to another. Where the role of parents is already large, integrated in social practices and in the countries of northern Europe, relations between them and academia will continue through the appropriate rules, based on modern communication tools. According to their traditions, they will build together smoothly, the new school.
Where students are obliged to pursue school activities intense outside the school (as in Japan or China), these practices will be emphasized. Inverse balance between registries school and after school time will emerge. In countries where students must already have at home, spend some time working on the Internet (as in Korea) they will have more to do. They gradually lose sight of the interests of the Unions. It is yet another type of school that is emerging.
Within each country, school organizations will be hybrids. And, from one country to another, changes are will in ways dissimilar, although international standards used as reference. These developments will be somewhat correlated with political systems. In fact, it already. Liberal countries, like England, introduce state regulations, while the Socialist Republic of Vietnam would, in the coming four years, the number of students in private universities rose from 17% to 60%.
To borrow a phrase from Gerard Moreau (Secretary General of AFAE): "The mammoth is reformed" flu requires, it will be. Far from the miserable current debates over the events of the patent, the structures and pathways from school, etc.. it must take into account issues that are most natural: how students learn in class? How students learn outside the classroom? How these two pathways are they articulated? What will the new role of teachers?
No single global model does emerge: the situations are varied between countries and within each country. States will set the standards, performance indicators and ensure regulations, ensuring the fairness of the system (major weakness the current system). The future will soon be in school systems and hybrid plurals.
Alain Bouvier
Former President
Member of High Council of Education
