France’s Interior Ministry said nearly 5,000 arrests have been made since the previous Monday, after days of clashes with police, damaged school buildings and street violence. Between 400 and 500 French secondary schools were expected to suspend classes fully or partially on Monday.
The Ministry of Education said classes would be “totally or partially” suspended wherever security conditions “are not met”. Education Minister Édouard Geffray told France 2 and France Inter that “between 400 and 500 suspended classes” had been reported on Friday. “There will probably be just as many on Monday,” he said, “but with a gradual, partial resumption of classes.”
The Toll on Schools and Staff
Twenty-four of the 735 schools affected by the protests had been “set on fire or ransacked”, Geffray said. He also reported that “78 staff members” from the Ministry of Education had been injured “since the start of the events”.
The demonstrations spread across several major cities. Rubbish bins and other objects burned, while protesters threw projectiles at security forces and damaged school buildings and street furniture. Police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets, defensive ball launchers (LBDs) and batons.
Several serious incidents followed. In Tours, a young man injured in Wednesday's clashes between pupils and police lost sight in his right eye, according to the local prosecutor. In La Ciotat, a 59-year-old teacher was doused in petrol and beaten during a pupil demonstration. Police arrested a 16-year-old boy suspected of the attack in Marseille on Sunday morning and placed him in custody. In Belfort, a group of young people chased, beat and repeatedly kicked a police officer. Police took two people into custody.
Order and the Government's Response
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez defended the security forces on Sunday morning and rejected claims that their response was “disproportionate”. “The police do not repress young people,” he said. They “protect” pupils and students who want to “advance their demands peacefully”. Police would intervene “firmly and without delay” to stop “damage, violence [and] abuses” by troublemakers.
Nuñez also denied that security forces were targeting “racialised young people from working-class neighbourhoods”. He called that claim a “blaming narrative totally disconnected from the real world”.
Le Parisien reported that the government intends to bring forward the timetable for the “casseurs-payeurs” bill. The measure would make people who take part in violent gatherings contribute to repair costs, even when they aren't directly responsible for the damage. The Senate is due to examine it at the end of October, later this month.
The Grievances Behind the Unrest
The movement began two weeks earlier at Saint-Exupéry secondary school in Créteil, in the Paris suburbs. Pupils there backed striking teachers denouncing a lack of staff and resources. Within a week, protests had spread nationwide. Pupils cited unsafe and insanitary buildings, overcrowded classes, timetables they said were impossible to manage, staff shortages, and teacher absences that weren't systematically covered. Some also opposed the ban on mobile phones in schools.
Geffray met pupil representatives on Friday morning. Afterwards, they said they had received no “concrete measures” and called for protests to continue. A third nationwide mobilisation, billed as “act III”, is planned for Tuesday, following protest days on 29 September, six days ago, and 1 October, four days ago.
All teachers' unions said on Sunday they would join the pupils. “Their demands are legitimate, and we support them all the more because they are at the heart of our own mobilisations denouncing the lack of resources for several years now,” they said in a press release. They added that the government's response had been limited to security-force intervention. “Reports from pupils who have been injured, assaulted and threatened are increasing by the day. This is unacceptable.”
Why This Matters: Hundreds of schools are closed or running partial timetables. The state is now managing a dispute over school resources through policing and arrests, measures of public order. The government has already moved to bring forward a bill that would shift repair costs onto participants in violent gatherings, putting the question of who pays for damage to public buildings on the Senate's agenda this month. Teachers' unions have joined the pupils, and the pupils say they have received no concrete measures. Tuesday's “act III” will show whether the education minister's gradual resumption of classes holds. From a centre-right perspective, the episode puts two issues at the centre of French politics: the state's ability to keep order in public institutions, and its ability to staff and maintain them.