In its September 12 issue, Témoignages reports on a World Bank report. This document states that at least 400 million students worldwide have lost school days due to extreme weather events since 2012. Children from poor families are the hardest hit. For the World Bank, an expenditure of less than 20 euros per children can be adapted to largely solve the problem.
La Reunion Island is inevitably affected by this problem. In fact, the school calendar imposed on young Réunionese and their supervisors is totally unsuited to the climatic reality of La Réunion, a tropical island in the Southern Hemisphere affected by cyclones and systematic summer heatwaves.
Over the years, the school calendar on our island has become increasingly similar to that in France. Summer vacations, at the heart of the cyclone season, have been shortened in favor of longer winter vacations.

Putting an end to an anti-climatic calendar

The aim of this rapprochement is above all to facilitate the adaptation of new arrivals, both teachers and students. This calendar is anti-pedagogical. It increases the number of school days during the period least conducive to learning, i.e. summer.
It is during this period that the risk of school closures is highest due to cyclones. It is also during the summer that children suffer most from the heat. The decision-makers behind this calendar don’t experience the intolerable conditions of overheated classrooms, or PE lessons under the tropical summer sun.
Adapting La Réunion Island’s school calendar to its reality will considerably reduce the number of school days cancelled due to extreme climatic events. What’s more, this measure will cost far less than $20 per children: it won’t cost the taxpayer a single euro.
The best solution is a school year starting in late February/early March and ending in December. In this way, the hottest period with the highest cyclonic risk will be mainly during the summer vacations.

Opportunity to develop the University of La Réunion

Opponents of this common-sense educational measure argue that it penalizes those who want to study in France. First of all, this number represents barely 1% of schoolchildren. On the contrary, this is an opportunity to develop the University of La Réunion, so that courses can be created in the Humanities, or the entire medical science curriculum can be set up on La Réunion. Our island already has a university hospital.
As for those who absolutely must go to France to continue their studies, the period from January to September can be used to gain initial professional experience. These few months can also be used for tutoring.
To ensure that the Baccalauréat pass rate is well over 80%, the level of requirements has been considerably reduced. The first university degree has been greatly devalued.
One of the consequences of this is a very high failure rate among first-year students, as the standards set by universities have not kept pace with those set by the French education system.

Such a calendar exists in Kanaky, New Caledonia, under FR sovereignty

This requires a profound rethink of mentalities that are essentially focused on a distant country, France. But it will also make it possible to fight a phenomenon that primarily affects children from the least affluent families, as the World Bank report reminds us.
If the priority of La Réunion’s education system is the academic success of the Reunionese, then a Réunionese school calendar is an obvious choice.
Such a calendar, based on the calendar year, has existed for many years in Kanaky New Caledonia, a territory still under the sovereignty of the French Republic (FR).
This shows that it is possible to improve the situation of the Reunionese while remaining within the framework of the French Republic.

M.M.