I write as the end of the school year approaches for French students. It has all been really hard, with so much changing over the past few weeks.

In April, president Emmanuel Macron announced the gradual return of students to school from 11 May, with the implementation of very strict health rules. Local authorities and teaching staff had little time to organise, not to mention their apprehension about the virus still circulating. Are we going to get it right, we asked. Are we ready? Are children afraid to go back to school?

In the end, despite all our worries, things have gone pretty well.

By the same teacher: The view from France as schools reopen

Reopening schools: All Dutch primary pupils are back in school -and here’s how

Coronavirus: Six lessons from children in lockdown around the world

Looking back, I can be more positive now, even if coming back to class wasn’t easy. We couldn’t accommodate all the students at the same time because of social distancing, so we divided our classes in two and took groups of eight or nine students every other day.

Not all of our students came back because the return was voluntary. The children who needed school most stayed at home.

Students and teachers were happy to meet again after all those weeks at a distance. The first days were unusual because everyone had to get their heads around the new rules. But the children quickly got used to it all and they respected the rules.

Our personal worries as teachers have gradually dissipated. Our greatest fear was about the length of breaktimes, since no contact was allowed between children and most games were prohibited.

Teachers showed a lot of imagination. We set sports challenges, which we filmed on video for the other students to watch. We created giant works of art with chalk on the school playground - the one in the picture is inspired by Australian artist Loretta Grayson.

As a result, time did not drag like it might have. My students even told me that they eventually liked having only 10 in class at a time, at most. They found there was less noise, fewer arguments and fighting, and that they concentrated better in class - which I can confirm. The teaching conditions were, indeed, excellent.

The only thing my students regretted was not seeing the rest of their friends, obviously. As for the students who stayed at home, we of course did not forget them: we carried on with distance education, even though we were allowed to stop it in theory. It seemed inconceivable to abandon some of our students, despite the extra work that this involved for us.

Then, at the beginning of June, as part of the gradual resumption of lessons in schools and colleges, a complementary system was put in place by the state. This is the Sport-Santé-Culture-Civisme (2S2C) - in English, “sport, health, culture and civics” - which aims to provide students with educational activities during school time to complete in the classroom or at home.

This was how we expected to end the year - but that was before another announcement by the president, who, for the third time since March, completely surprised us on 14 June. He indicated, during his televised speech, that there was to be compulsory resumption of classes at schools and colleges from 22 June, with simplified health rules. There was no obligation, however, for high-school students to return, and university students would only resume classes from September.

Once again, things were done in a hurry because the new version of the health rules did not appear until Wednesday 17 June, leaving only five days for teaching teams to contact parents and put in place the new provisions. Most parents were unhappy, as they did not understand why it was necessary to change things just two weeks before the summer holiday. They had been happy enough with how things had been going - setting aside the families who were completely opposed to the return of their children to school.

Teachers were divided because, once again, they had to reorganise their classes for these final two weeks of the year, although it did mean we could get all the students in at once. The new rules protocol put an end to the limit of 15 pupils per class, although we still have to keep everyone as far apart as possible.

At breaktime, we are no longer required to keep children at least one metre apart, since they are outdoors, but they should not mix with other classes in the school. Teachers are no longer required to wear a mask in class, provided they are more than one metre from the students. Parents can come to the school if they wear a mask and disinfect their hands. Other rules have not changed: staggered arrival of students; frequent handwashing; daily disinfection of the premises; and so on.

As of 22 June, almost all our students have returned to school. Unfortunately, we discovered that a few had completely dropped out in the past two months, despite our efforts with online learning.

This not entirely satisfactory return of something approaching school as normal, just two weeks before the summer holidays, has allowed us to reconnect with a very large majority of our students, after three months off for some, and to update their achievements in preparation for the start of the next school year in September. It has also reassured those children who were beginning to wonder if the Covid-19 lockdown would ever be lifted.

We’re all going on holiday with lighter hearts after so many weeks of worrying - hoping to meet again in September for a fresh start.

The writer is a primary school teacher in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France