One third of Member States have already closed all their schools, one third are in the process of doing so in some regions and a final third are leaving schools and training institutes to operate normally for the time being. This was the conclusion reached on Thursday 12 March by the Croatian Minister of Education, Blaženka Divjak, after the videoconference she held with her European counterparts on the coronavirus.
This format of meeting has never been used before, but recently is increasingly widely used, as evidenced by the extraordinary summit of Heads of State or Government on 10 March. The aim is to limit human contact as much as possible in order to contain the spread of the virus, which the World Health Organization (WHO) classed as a “pandemic” the day before.
Blaženka Divjak described the meeting as “excellent”, saying at a press conference that some 20 ministers had attended. “The purpose of the meeting was to discuss our respective experiences as the virus increasingly impacts our education systems,” she added, stressing that it was essential to “ensure the health and safety of learners and staff, while avoiding major disruption or interruption of educational services”. Several avenues were mentioned, such as teleworking by parents or the use of sick leave to look after young children or distance learning, including via television in the absence of computer equipment.
Among the States that are shutting down their school systems are Italy, Ireland, Denmark, Slovenia and Poland. Croatia, for its part, plans to close its schools and universities in the Istria region as of 13 March. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)