Unprecedented student protests are rocking France

PARIS  –  France is struggling to contain its biggest student protests in decades. What started as a demonstration in support of striking teachers at a suburban high school to the north of Paris has snowballed into a national crisis.

Hundreds of schools have been forced to close and more than 5,000 people have been taken into police custody, most of them minors with no previous criminal records. Students, teachers and policemen have been injured. One student in the north-east city of Lens lost his hand after reportedly picking up a grenade and another in Tours, the use of an eye. Authorities estimate hundreds of thousands of protesters, including students, teachers and delegates from trade unions, took to the streets on Tuesday as protests sweep the country.

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In Paris, tear gas filled the air, and trash cans, school desks and chairs were set alight as riot police with shields and batons clashed with some demonstrators. The original protest at Saint-Exupéry high school in a Parisian suburb on September 21 attracted little attention. Pupils had joined their teachers to protest a lack of staff and resources. When their demands were met and extra staff sent to the school, the strike ended, but by then the match had been lit.

According to student leader Manès Nadel, it spread like wildfire.  “It’s an unprecedented number of schools that are now involved,” he said, adding that France’s Education Ministry had been “totally overwhelmed by the crisis.”

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Despite their suburban beginnings, the protests are now drawing international attention. US President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that “what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

“This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great country,” Trump posted on Truth Social. Pupils at lycées in Paris and the surrounding region began blocking entrances, and within days similar scenes were reported across the country, from Lille in the north to Marseille in the south. Images of students setting alight trash cans, manning barricades, assaulting teaching staff and clashing with police led to questions about the police’s response and the far left’s involvement. More than 100 high schools have been damaged since the start of the protest movement. Critics have accused the police of a heavy-handed response. One policeman was captured on camera using a headlock on a girl in Alençon, a technique now prohibited by law. The violence and the speed with which the protests have grown have taken many by surprise, but the grievances are long-standing — an overcrowded, ill-equipped and understaffed education system that many students feel is no longer fit for purpose. Videos have circulated for years showing classrooms with too few desks or chairs, or students finding their classes cancelled when an absent teacher is not replaced.

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A fertility spike in France in 2010 has led to a rise in the number of high school students now attending schools that have seen years of real-terms funding cuts. Secondary schools now have fewer teachers than in 2008, despite an extra 250,000 students enrolled. In the public sector, 70% of classrooms have more than 30 pupils per class. Critics say the government’s response has been slow and tin-eared. Initially much of it was focused on the far-left LFI party and its presence at the barricades. The party, led by Jean-Luc Melenchon, who’s expected to do well in the country’s presidential election next spring, has repeatedly defended both the students’ right to protest and his party’s right to be there. There’s also been a lot of focus on the need for a firm police response and the cost of the protest. Damage to schools in the greater Paris region alone is estimated at 7 million euros ($7.84 million). There was an initial concession over the fees at technological high schools that had been planned for 2027 but this has now been removed from the government’s budget. “The government’s response has been irresponsible and it confirms exactly why the students are angry, because they are never heard,” said Manes. “They are responding only with repression.”

The protesters do now have the government’s full attention, especially after a spike in violence late last week, when the interior minister noted a shift from student protest to urban violence and some 2,000 people were taken into custody in a single day. On Friday, Edouard Geffray, the education minister, met with student leaders. No agreement was reached, however, and the student leaders called for a massive turnout on Tuesday immediately afterward.

France’s interior ministry estimated there were about 256,000 protesters out on the streets nationwide, including 56,000 in Paris. Meanwhile, the Union Syndicale Lycéenne, one of the high school student unions involved in organizing the demonstrations, suggested a much larger turnout of 450,000 people across the country. French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, speaking in the National Assembly on Tuesday, said “extreme violence has reached the gates of our high schools and it must be condemned unequivocally.”

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