What a way to run schools

I love many things about living in France, but their state (secondary) school system is not one of them.
My chief gripe is that pupils of absent teachers are automatically assigned to a class of ‘étude/permanence.’
No chance of the school finding a replacement teacher, even if the absence is due to a day of training. i.e. a planned absence.

No chance, either, of a colleague offering to cover, which I gather is a non-existent concept in state schools.

So my daughter has spent, and continues to spend, many hours in a room full of mostly bored pupils.

When comparing cultures I try, as Montaigne famously did, to keep an open mind, but certain aspects of the educational system seem, to me at any rate, to be an extraordinary state of affairs.

Bill REES, Gard