France seems to see its biggest school-protest day yet as arrests pass 6,500

France’s high school protests grew into something closer to a national uprising on Tuesday, October 6. Teenagers blockaded hundreds of lycées, the French upper high schools for students aged roughly 15 to 18, and marched through Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Rennes, Lille, Bordeaux, and Nantes, joined this time by parents, grandparents, university students, and trade unions. Organizers called the day “Act Three” of a movement that began in mid-September. The BBC describes crowds of teenagers marching from Paris’s Place de la République calling for more resources for schools and what they called less repression from police.

Even the size of the day depends on who counted. The Interior Ministry estimated 266,000 demonstrators nationwide, including 56,000 in Paris, according to the Associated Press report carried by NPR. The BBC cites a government figure of more than 250,000. Student unions said 450,000. The Education Ministry said classes stopped completely or partly at 891 high schools, which the BBC describes as almost a quarter of all lycées in the country; the student unions said protesters blockaded 1,800.

Most of the marching stayed peaceful, the BBC and AP report, though police and protesters clashed in several cities. Riot officers fired tear gas in Paris, where small groups clashed with police at a city square after the main march, and in Marseille, where masked protesters grabbed bollards and bins to build a barricade before dispersing. Police used a water cannon in Rennes and clashed with demonstrators in Lyon. Outside the Hélène-Boucher lycée in Paris’s 20th district, which authorities had shut, protesters tipped trash cans and bicycles into a makeshift barricade, AP reports, while parents and other adults placed themselves between the teenagers and the police.

The grievances start inside the classroom. Students describe absent teachers that nobody replaces, rooms without enough desks and chairs, leaking ceilings, rats in some buildings, and classrooms that turn sweltering in summer without air conditioning, according to the BBC, AP, Al Jazeera, and DW. French high school students also spend more compulsory hours in class than most of their European peers, AP notes. The movement started with local anger in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorer suburb north of Paris, the BBC reports; DW dates the first protest to September 17 at one Paris school, while Al Jazeera dates the first class boycotts to September 21.

Adults in the crowds said they came to back the teenagers. “We need to listen to them,” Léa Monimart, a demonstrator in Lille, told AP. Alain, a retired teacher in his 70s marching in Paris with his wife Michèle, told the BBC that his three grandchildren “have protested peacefully in front of their respective high schools in Paris in recent days” and still faced tear gas. Suzanne Nijdam, who leads a federation of student associations, told AP the demonstrations would continue until the government acts on the complaints: “we really need to act now.”

Policing has become the sharpest flashpoint. The BBC reports that the Interior Ministry counted 6,547 people stopped or arrested since September 28, and AP says most of the more than 6,500 arrests involved minors; nearly 500 people went into custody on Tuesday alone. On Monday a 15-year-old in the northern city of Lens lost a hand when a police stun grenade exploded. Authorities say he picked it up; students allege it hit him directly after an officer fired, and prosecutors still investigate, according to the BBC and Al Jazeera. Separately, prosecutors charged a police officer with violence causing mutilation or permanent disability after a tear-gas grenade hit a 14-year-old in the face during a blockade in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône last week, breaking his jaw and several teeth, the BBC reports. Amnesty International’s French branch has called the police response “disproportionate,” and France’s police inspectorate, the IGPN, has opened inquiries into several cases.

The government defends the police while promising to listen. Lecornu told parliament that 215 students, 85 school staff, and 715 police officers had suffered injuries since the protests began, the BBC reports. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called the police response proportionate in “almost all cases” and said some protests had turned into riots. Education Minister Édouard Geffray said “ultra-violent elements infiltrated the high-school student movements,” and on Sunday, DW reports, he said 24 schools had burned or suffered ransacking and 78 education staff had suffered injuries. “Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,” Geffray said, according to DW. A teacher in La Ciotat suffered blows and a gasoline dousing on the sidelines of a protest on Sunday, DW reports, and last week video showed a group of young people beating and kicking a police officer on the ground in Belfort. The ministry has offered an anonymous online portal for students’ complaints and an afternoon of internal discussion in schools on Friday, which the BBC says has made little impression so far. Lecornu has said a report on the demands should arrive by the end of the month and that the government would not “yield an inch” to violence, Al Jazeera reports.

The protests now sit inside a presidential race. Macron cannot run again, and the vote comes in April and May, about seven months away. In parliament, Lecornu accused the radical-left France Unbowed party of trying to “sow chaos,” the BBC reports, and he called allegations that the police act out of racism a “lie,” according to AP. France Unbowed lawmaker Aurélien Le Coq listed “riot police, batons, rubber bullets, tear gas” and called the violence “absolutely unbearable.” Polls currently show France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon in second place behind Marine Le Pen of the hard-right National Rally, the BBC reports; Le Pen on Tuesday released a shadow budget promising 140 billion euros in savings by 2032, according to Al Jazeera.

Money sits underneath the anger. The government wants a 2027 budget with 54 billion euros in savings, Al Jazeera reports, and public-sector unions oppose a plan to freeze salaries. Fuel prices have soared because of the Iran war, AP notes. Jacob Ross, a France analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations, told Al Jazeera the episode shows that the government and its ministers “don’t have the capacity to calm things down.” The CGT says more protests involving school and university students will follow on Thursday, and student groups in neighboring Belgium also marched on Tuesday, with more than 30 arrests in Liège, AP reports. As of Tuesday afternoon PT, no outcome from Macron’s evening meeting with ministers had appeared in the reports this desk read.