As school protests in France entered their third week, student unions nationwide declared Oct. 6 a major day of mobilization, with teachers and parents also taking to the streets.
The French high-school (“lycée”) protests started around Sept. 17–21 in Créteil, in the Paris suburbs, over shortages of teachers and staff and rapidly spread across the nation through social media. The protesters have called attention to multiple issues, including teacher shortages and unfilled vacancies, overcrowded classrooms, poorly maintained school buildings, and exhausting school schedules.
Vincent Tiberj, a sociologist at Sciences Po Bordeaux, an elite French institute of political studies, told Le Monde, a leading French daily, that the students have “a constructed discourse” and coherent demands and are not simply protesting under political influence.
“This rapid spread of the movement among very different young people highlights a feeling of a shared destiny, with common concerns and anger,” Tiberj told the newspaper.
Protesters have also raised concerns about Parcoursup, France’s university-application system, with students alleging that the system has become stressful and excessively dependent on an algorithmic admissions process.
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Another Le Monde report on Monday said that nearly 30 percent of France’s 3,600 high schools had been impacted by the protests in some way, with 222 blockades reported. These institutions were affected by strikes or protests.
Protests escalation
The school protests escalated into violent confrontations between students and riot police as trade unions urged teachers to join the demonstrations. On Sept. 28, a 14-year-old student identified as Eden suffered a double jaw fracture and serious dental injuries after being struck in the face by a police-fired tear-gas grenade during a school blockade in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, northwest of Paris, Le Monde reported.
Violent confrontations became more widespread between Sept. 29 and 30, after police used tear gas and other riot-control measures while protesters threw projectiles and set fires. Sept. 29 marked a major escalation, with Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez reporting seven incidents in which hydrochloric acid was thrown at police officers during violent clashes around high-school blockades, according to an Al Jazeera report.
The following day, the French Interior Ministry reported 1,949 arrests and 305 injured police officers, gendarmes and firefighters after another day of clashes and violence at multiple locations, Le Monde reported. Violence continued over the following days, with a 15-year-old losing his hand after picking up a police stun grenade on Monday.
Reuters reported that the total number of arrests had reached 6100 by Tuesday, with the Justice Ministry reporting that 87 percent of those detained were minors. More than 1,800 people were being prosecuted, including 1,483 minors, while 790 cases had been dismissed. Those injured included 715 police officers and 215 teenagers.
As the protests escalated on Oct. 2, Education Minister Édouard Geffray met with high-school organizations. Their demands included the abolition of Parcoursup; “an emergency plan for school buildings” to make study conditions “livable” and “dignified;” reform of school schedules; and a massive recruitment plan for teachers “to immediately address the 10 percent of classes that are not covered by replacement teachers,” Sortir Paris reported, a Paris-focused media outlet.
The protesters were disappointed with the outcome of the meeting and decided to call for a third phase, or “Acte III,” of their nationwide demonstrations beginning Tuesday.
The “Acte III” started with police firing tear gas shells outside French high schools as students, teachers and parents joined the demonstrations in a big way. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu described it as the most violent school protests in decades in the country, according to a Reuters report.
Repercussions on domestic politics
As protests have escalated from high-school student groups to university students, teachers, unions and wider public-sector workers, the concerns are also likely to expand from education to energy prices, the cost of living and climate issues. The movement could potentially escalate into a major anti-government movement, according to media reports.
Le Monde described the trade-union-backed movement as a potentially dangerous “coalition of anger” in its editorial on Monday. “An inter-union coalition representing education workers—including FSU, CGT, FO, CFDT, UNSA, and SUD—is calling on its members to participate, including through strike action.”
FSU, CGT, FO, CFDT, UNSA, and SUD are major French trade unions and trade union confederations.
The situation is more complicated for the French government because the protesters are demanding “structural policies” that require time and money, according to the Le Monde editorial.
“The government is constrained by the catastrophic state of France’s public finances. The 2027 budget, which lawmakers are due to begin examining on Oct. 12, calls for several billion euros in spending cuts and fiscal savings,” the editorial stated. It noted that France’s public debt had reached €3.5955 trillion by the end of June, its highest level since 1946, leaving the government with limited room to address protesters’ demands amid growing pressure from financial markets.
According to media reports, the protesting students also have strong support from far-left politicians, including Clémence Guetté, a National Assembly lawmaker and vice president of the Assembly representing Val-de-Marne, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a left-wing politician and leader of La France insoumise (LFI), a left-wing political party. The Associated Press also reported that support from the French left for the students has been “strong.”
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