Non-school childcare facilities

Nursing personnel

The personnel of nurseries, day care nurseries and parental nurseries must include a nurse.

This staff member manages health on a day-to-day basis, for the benefit of each child and of the community, in close collaboration with the doctor responsible for preventive health monitoring. He/she participates in the implementation of the care plan, with particular attention to the goals of ‘healthy living’. He/she accompanies the doctor during medical consultations and passes on messages between the parents and the doctor.

At the collective level (children and staff), he/she ensures that the staff and interns receive medical monitoring, ensures compliance with the rules on keeping children at home if they have an infectious illness, and informs the staff about the different aspects of health and hygiene.

Social staff

The personnel of nurseries, day care nurseries, parental nurseries and municipal childcare centres must include a staff member with a social function.

This staff member provides parenthood support, more specifically at social and family level. His/her role is both childcare-related and paramedical in nature. He/she accompanies and observes the children, and helps devise various interventions relating to their psychological and social well-being in the context of the educational plan. The social staff member analyses enrolment applications (incoming/outgoing) in the light of legislation on parents’ financial contribution. He/she ensures administrative follow-up with families and colleagues and makes the first contact between the child and the staff.

He supervises and organises the staff’s activities from a quality viewpoint. He/she ensures adherence to the rules of professional ethics.

Pre-secondary and secondary education

Health promotion in schools

Health promotion in schools is compulsory for all pupils and staff at pre-secondary and secondary schools (decree of 20 December 2001). For schools organised by the French Community, health promotion in schools is exercised by the staff of the Centres for Psychological, Medical and Social Services. Specific services are authorised for the subsidised networks.

Health promotion in schools consists of :

• the implementation of health promotion programmes and of a school environment that is favourable to the health ;
• the medical monitoring of pupils, including individual health check-ups and a vaccination policy ;
• the prevention and screening of transmissible diseases ;
• the establishment of the standardised collection of health data.

The promotion of an environment that is favourable to health requires, in collaboration with the school, actions relating to the facilities in general, and more specifically to the classrooms, canteens, playgrounds and toilets. Pupils’ compulsory individual health check-ups, which include the medical examination and the follow-up to it as well as the vaccination policy, must be organised; there must be a minimum of five and a maximum of eight such check-ups throughout the whole of pre-secondary and secondary education.

The services carry out their roles in close collaboration with the competent Centres for Psychological, Medical and Social Services. They also collaborate with the parents or with the pupil’s family environment, with professionals involved in the individual management of young people’s health, and more specifically with the general practitioner or paediatrician.

The personnel of the services for health promotion in schools receive continuing training.

Educational advisers

Ordinary and specialised pre-secondary and secondary education receive support from educational advice and support bodies: a ‘service’ in the education organised by the French Community, and ‘units’ in grant-aided education. The members of this service and these units are appointed by the government from among the staff members of the institutions organised or grant-aided by the French Community. In the latter case, the appointment is carried out on the proposal of the controlling authorities’ representation and coordination bodies. The following may be appointed :

• members of the managerial and teaching staff and of the auxiliary teaching, paramedical, psychological and social staff in educational institutions ;
• members of the managerial, teaching and auxiliary teaching staff in higher education institutions ;
• members of the technical staff in the Centres for Psychological, Medical and Social Services.

Appointees are entitled to leave in order to carry out assignments. Among the educational advisers of each service or unit, the government appoints (on the proposal of the bodies for the representation and coordination of the controlling authorities in the case of subsidised education) a coordinating educational adviser for a renewable two-year term.

Prior to these appointments, the government or the body for the representation and coordination of the controlling authorities decides on the profile required for the position and initiates a call for applications. Applicants must hold a certificate of attendance of 80 hours’ specific training (for the position of educational adviser) or of 30 hours’ training in human resources management (for the position of coordinating educational adviser).

Thus the pre-secondary education system organised by the French Community has nine educational advisers, whose remits are determined on the basis of the subjects concerned (modern languages, IT, psychomotor education and physical education) or the level of schooling (pre-primary or primary) and the geographical area to be covered.

Other types of staff work in schools.

Subsidised contract workers

In recent years, various projects have been carried out in schools relying on the recruitment of subsidised contract workers (ACSs) and on employment promotion grants (APEs) made available to schools as part of unemployment reduction measures.

These additional staff may be given various assignments, the main ones in pre-secondary education being :

• childcare for small children aged two-and-a-half to three years ;
• second language courses ;
• replacement of staff on leave of absence for a mission ;
• reception of newly arrived pupils in schools that take large numbers of children of recent migrants.

Other ACS and APE workers are involved in secondary and specialised education.

Childcare workers

Childcare workers may be assigned to nursery schools. These persons are qualified to care for and supervise very young children. They are made available to schools on the basis of need and of objective criteria such as the number of very young children (under the age of 3 years and 9 months) or less autonomous children. In the decree of 2 June 2006, the government of the French Community determined the status of childcare workers in ordinary pre-primary education organised or subsidised by the French Community.

Speech therapists

In pre-secondary education, speech therapy services can be performed on the school's premises by speech therapists, whose jobs are neither financed nor subsidised by the French Community. Such services must remain optional and take place outside the time allocated to compulsory subjects. These activities must be carried out in close collaboration with the class teachers and the teachers of the children concerned.

In addition, since the beginning of the 2019 school year, within the CPMS, speech therapists can accompany and advise pre-primary school teachers who take in children with learning difficulties.

Finally, in order to promote the social adjustment and training of children with special needs, the temporary or permanent integration into mainstream education of a pupil regularly enrolled in specialised education can be organised.  These children will then be accompanied by speech therapists whose jobs are financed or subsidised by the French Community.

Other staff

There are very few technical and administrative staff in French Community schools.

In the context of differentiated staffing, some schools may recruit additional staff, and in particular teaching assistants and contractual workers.