Between 400 and 500 secondary schools in France were expected to suspend classes fully or partially on Monday, as pupil protests continued amid clashes with police, school damage and street violence. The Ministry of Education said schools would suspend classes where security conditions “are not met”. The disruption has put school safety and pupils’ ability to attend lessons at the centre of a national dispute.
Schools and public order
Education Minister Édouard Geffray told France 2 and France Inter that “between 400 and 500 suspended classes” were recorded on Friday. “There will probably be just as many on Monday, but with a gradual, partial resumption of classes,” he said.
Geffray said protesters had “set on fire or ransacked” 24 of the 735 schools affected by the protests. He reported that “78 staff members” from the Ministry of Education had been injured “since the start of the events”. The Interior Ministry said nearly 5,000 arrests had been made since Monday.
Demonstrations spread across several major cities. Protesters set fire to rubbish bins and other objects, threw projectiles at security forces, and damaged school buildings and street furniture. Police used tear gas, rubber bullets, defensive ball launchers (LBDs) and batons to disperse some demonstrators.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez defended the security forces’ actions on Sunday morning, rejecting claims that their response was “disproportionate”. “The police do not repress young people,” he said, but “protect” pupils and students who want to “advance their demands peacefully”. He said police would intervene “firmly and without delay” to stop troublemakers from causing “damage, violence [and] abuses”.
Nuñez also rejected claims that security forces were targeting “racialised young people from working-class neighbourhoods”. He called the charge a “blaming narrative totally disconnected from the real world”.
The dispute inside schools
The movement began two weeks earlier at Saint-Exupéry secondary school in Créteil, in the Paris suburbs, in support of striking teachers who denounced a lack of staff and resources. It gathered momentum and spread across the country over the following week.
Pupils have cited unsafe and insanitary buildings, overcrowded classes, timetables they said were impossible to manage, staff shortages and teacher absences that schools didn’t systematically cover. Some also oppose the ban on mobile phones in schools.
Geffray met pupil representatives on Friday morning. After the meeting, the representatives said they had received no “concrete measures” and called for protests to continue the following week. Organisers planned a third nationwide mobilisation, described as “act III”, for Tuesday, following nationwide protest days on 29 September and 1 October.
All teachers’ unions said on Sunday they would join the pupils’ protest. In a press release, they said: “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.” The unions said the government response had amounted to security-force intervention alone. They added: “Reports from pupils who have been injured, assaulted and threatened are increasing by the day. This is unacceptable.”
Violence and proposed repair costs
Several serious incidents were reported. In Tours, a young man injured in clashes between pupils and police on Wednesday lost sight in his right eye, the local prosecutor said. 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 carrying out the attack in Marseille on Sunday morning and took him into custody.
In Belfort, a police officer was chased, beaten and repeatedly kicked by a group of young people. Two people were taken into custody after the attack.
Le Parisien reported that the government intended to bring forward the timetable for the “casseurs-payeurs” bill in response to widespread damage around schools and in public spaces. The bill aims to make people who take part in violent gatherings contribute to repair costs, even when they aren’t directly responsible for the damage. The Senate was due to examine the bill at the end of October.