France School Protests

What began in mid-September as scattered walkouts by 15- to 18-year-old lycéens in the Paris region has become France’s most sustained education protest in years. Taken up by the secondary-school students’ union Union Syndicale Lycéenne (USL) and now backed by parents’ groups, university campuses, lecturers and the CGT, Tuesday’s demonstrations were billed as “Act Three” of the movement — with marches staged in Marseille, Lyon, Nice, Nantes, Rennes, Strasbourg, Lille and Paris.

The USL claimed 1,800 high schools and 90% of universities were blockaded or closed, calling mobilisation “a new record.” The Education Ministry’s figure is far lower: 891 schools with classes suspended totally or partially. The Interior Ministry counted about 86,000 protesters nationwide excluding the Paris region, with 20,000–40,000 expected at the Paris march to Place de la République. That gap between street and state tallies is itself now part of the fight.

Overcrowded classes of 35 or more, absent teachers left unreplaced, 10-hour school days, short lunch breaks and dilapidated buildings — a 160-year-old Marseille lycée that becomes unbearable in summer heat is a recurring example. The USL’s formal demands: 150,000 new higher-education places, €10 billion for emergency school reconstruction, and mass teacher recruitment.

Officials describe unprecedented “urban violence” aimed at teachers and police: schools set alight, fireworks and mortars thrown, 715 officers and 215 students injured. But the images driving anger are of teenagers maimed by crowd-control munitions — a 15-year-old who lost a hand in Lens, reportedly from a Grenade à Main de Désencerclement (GMD “sting-ball”); a 16-year-old, Maël, who lost the use of his eye at the Balzac high-school blockade in Tours, blamed on an LBD rubber-ball launcher; and a 14-year-old whose jaw was fractured by a tear-gas canister. Amnesty International has demanded an end to the “disproportionate police response,” and France’s human rights commission (CNCDH) has raised “serious concern,” urging de-escalation. The Interior Minister confirms 10 IGPN investigations into alleged brutality.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has ordered ministers to address the top demands — replacing absent teachers, reviewing the 10-hour day, extending lunch breaks, repairing buildings — with first proposals due by end of October, alongside Education Minister Édouard Geffray’s national student consultation. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin insists a “violent minority” has hijacked the protests. The obstacle is money: a government scrambling to rein in public spending faces a polarised electorate with a presidential election only months away — and lycéens who, as one protester put it, “still feel like we are not being heard.”