France school protests spread as hundreds of schools close and dozens of staff are injured
Hundreds of schools across France were hit by disruption on Friday as student protests over school conditions escalated into fires, blockades and clashes wit...
Hundreds of schools across France were hit by disruption on Friday as student protests over school conditions escalated into fires, blockades and clashes with police. The education ministry said at least 65 staff members were injured, while riot police moved in after burning barricades and bins were reported in parts of Paris and in Pantin.
The demonstrations began earlier this week in Paris and have since spread nationwide, with more than 500 schools facing disruption. The unrest has centred on complaints about a lack of teachers, overcrowded classrooms and buildings that pupils say are falling apart.
Anger over classrooms, staff shortages
“We are angry,” a 16-year-old student in Paris told the BBC, saying it would take “a lot of noise” to force change in French schools. In north-eastern Paris, pupils were seen sitting on top of wheelie bins to block a high school entrance, while others kept lessons from starting at all.
One 17-year-old at Lycée Voltaire said students wanted to be heard. “School is a right, not a privilege,” read one cardboard sign at the protest. The grievances run through the system: teacher shortages, staff absences, classes packed with up to 40 children and old buildings that pupils describe as unsafe and neglected.
Sharp anger. No patience.
Violence, detentions and injuries
The protests have turned increasingly violent. Earlier this week, police detained more than 400 people as students clashed with officers over class sizes, exhausting timetables and shortages of staff. In Lille, protesters set fire to bins and threw bottles, paving stones and other objects at police, who answered with teargas.
France’s justice minister, Gerald Darmanin, said the situation had shifted beyond student protest. “We have gone from high-school student demonstrations to a public order disturbance,” he said. Reporting from the scene described teenagers suffering eye injuries, and one losing his teeth.
The scale of the unrest has caught authorities off guard. The government is now struggling with what observers have described as its worst crisis in months, as school blockades continue and unrest spreads from city to city.
What comes next
The education ministry said more than 500 schools were facing disruption, and earlier figures put the number of affected lycées at 1,027 across the country, with 222 blockaded. Hundreds of schools remained closed on Friday as the protests continued to move beyond Paris and into a wider national movement.
With pupils demanding better conditions and police still deployed around schools and streets, the pressure now shifts to whether the government can calm the unrest without deepening it. For now, the noise is getting louder.
Source: bbc.com
