Starting 16 November, a dozen mobile teams will be on duty to guarantee immediate testing in schools across the Grand Duchy. The ministry emphasised that this procedure will most notably be of great efficiency in “scenario 1", where only one positive infection has been determined in a class. In these cases, the rest of pupils and the teacher will continue going to school while isolated from the rest of the building.
The teacher union CGFB and its sub-branch SPEBS, which focuses on children with special needs, have meanwhile voiced concerns about the communication of such measures, noting that at the moment, identical scenarios are being solved with opposing methods. Claudine Muller from SPEBS commented: “The mixed messages we receive cause a lot of confusion and frustration among our staff members, and I have come to notice that some have begun showing resignation regarding the issue of contracting the virus.”
SEW-OGBL joined this line of criticism. Union president Patrick Arendt underlined that the minister of education needed to increase transparency: “Of course we also want to keep schools open, that much is clear. This does however not mean that we can pretend the problem doesn’t exist!”
Minister Meisch has acknowledged the facts and admitted that especially in high schools, something needed to be done about infection spreading among students in higher grades. He enlisted a return to remote distance learning as a potential solution to the problem. The student union CNEL noted in that regard that they prefer maintaining pupils in schools as much as possible. CNEL secretary Anna Moura explained: “Especially students in lower grades benefit from the class-room setting, as they are not yet as independent when it comes to organising homework and studying.”
According to RTL sources, Michel Lucius high school has initiated such a model today, meaning that some classes will switch between one week at school and one week at home, where parts of the class will be streamed.
