A 15-year-old student lost his hand in a clash with police near Auguste Béhal high school in Lens on Monday. France suspended police use of stun grenades while officials investigate what happened. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said there was a “strong possibility” a grenade caused the injury. The student underwent an amputation and remained in hospital.
The BBC reported conflicting accounts. Authorities said the boy picked up the grenade before it exploded, while students alleged an officer fired it directly at him. The local prefect said police faced 200-250 students throwing stones and fireworks. When the grenade detonates, it sends out small rubber pellets.
Police force under investigation
Nuñez said the police watchdog IGPN had opened 18 investigations into whether officers acted proportionately. “There is a police action that raises questions for all of us within the Ministry of the Interior; it's what happened in Lens,” he told French radio RTL. He said, “When there is suspicion of disproportionate force, there are always judicial investigations,” and added that the government was “here to protect high school students.”
Rights groups, students and some political opponents accused police of disproportionate force. USL high school union head Ryad Rani told French radio: “We are telling M. Nuñez, calm your police officers down and call for restraint.” Some police unions reacted coolly to the suspension. They invoked their right to withdraw from duty and cited “their inability to respond” if unrest occurred.
The protests began in mid-September and continued through Wednesday. More than 500 schools were fully or partly closed on Wednesday, after demonstrations disrupted almost a quarter of France's lycées on Tuesday, according to the BBC. The interior ministry put Tuesday's turnout at more than 250,000; student unions said 450,000 took part. The unions called a fourth round of protests for Thursday in Paris and other cities.
The interior ministry said 488 people were arrested and 43 security-force members were hurt during Tuesday's demonstrations. Since the protests began, 215 students, 85 staff and 715 police officers had been injured, the prime minister said. The interior ministry said police had stopped or arrested more than 6,500 people. In some cities, police used tear gas and water cannon.
Education costs and unequal conditions
Students have cited dilapidated school buildings, teacher shortages, overloaded schedules, inadequate funding, poor learning conditions and inequality between regions. They link those conditions to France's declining results in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which have fallen faster than the OECD average since 2015. French 15-year-olds scored 43 points lower in reading in 2025 than a decade earlier, the biggest drop in the OECD. Their mathematics scores also fell the most.
Students are also seeking changes to Parcoursup, the platform for applying to first-year higher education courses, which they regard as opaque and unequal. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu called their demands “legitimate” and described the unrest as the most violent student demonstrations in decades. In a televised address, he said the country couldn't be “indifferent” to their concerns and that the “anger of young people does not come from nowhere.” He said security forces had no orders to “confront” protesting students.
The government is consulting secondary students and has launched projects on cover for absent teachers, school repairs, timetables and Parcoursup. Lecornu promised a plan by the end of October. The Agora app, launched to collect young people's grievances, had received 30,000 anonymous contributions.
The left-wing CGT, France's second-largest trade union, backed the student union's call for further street protests on Thursday. It said it would “continue to shoulder its responsibilities in supporting the young people who have mobilised and protecting them from violence and police repression.”
Protests echo across borders
In Liège, in Belgium's French-speaking Wallonia region, hundreds of students rallied over rising education costs, overcrowded classrooms and difficulty accessing study materials. Local media reported 107 arrests in recent days; France 24 also reported at least 107 arrests connected with protests that month. Authorities advised shopkeepers to close early. The official warning system BE-Alert said Thursday: “Major unrest is underway. Close your businesses”. The main train station closed and later reopened. Police urged people to avoid the city centre, where traffic was severely disrupted.
Videos circulating online showed shattered glass, fires, mostly young protesters and police blocking roads. During Wednesday's protest, police checked students for weapons. Local authorities couldn't immediately confirm arrests that Belga said involved offences including property damage and arson.
Some Belgian students said they were in contact with French counterparts. “We support each other because we're facing pretty much the same issues,” said 19-year-old student Alfred. Amelia Di Salve, also 19 and studying to become a teacher, said demonstrations in France helped reignite the Belgian movement. “When we saw nothing was changing without protests, we decided we would start ... France did influence us a little,” she said.
In Portugal, the main teachers' union FENPROF began an indefinite strike in mid-September over overtime, with teachers refusing unpaid work beyond the legally mandated 35-hour week. FENPROF said the causes of the French protests—deteriorating school conditions, teacher shortages, excessive workloads and widening inequalities in access to education—were familiar to teachers and students elsewhere. In Spain, teachers' unions protested conditions in state schools, and Madrid teachers planned a strike for October 14 seeking fewer hours, smaller classes and higher salaries.