Nationwide protests by French high school students entered their third week this week, with hundreds of schools disrupted and nearly 3,000 students detained since the movement began, as the government struggled to contain unrest that has increasingly spilled into street violence.
The demonstrations started in late September in the Île-de-France region around Paris, where teenagers began blockading school gates over overcrowded classrooms, chronic teacher shortages and crumbling buildings that students say left them sweltering during this year's heatwaves. Planned budget cuts to education, part of a wider austerity push, have deepened the anger. On a single day last week, France's interior ministry said 625 people were detained and 83 police officers and gendarmes were injured as blockades hit 356 schools nationwide; earlier this week, a further 164 people were arrested as unrest spread to schools in Alpes-Maritimes, Var, Marseille, Lille and Sedan.
From Classrooms to Clashes
What began as school blockades has broadened into a wider standoff. At least ten universities have now been fully blocked as university students join the movement, and roughly 1,020 of France's 3,700 lycées have seen some form of protest activity, with around 400 schools closed on a recent Friday alone. In Strasbourg, Marseille and Rennes, police have used tear gas against crowds that threw fireworks and stones and set rubbish bins ablaze, and officials close to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu say the demonstrations have shifted from a protest movement toward what one aide described as urban violence.
Lecornu, who took office in September after his predecessor François Bayrou lost a confidence vote over an unpopular deficit-reduction plan, has tried to strike a balance between acknowledging the students' grievances and condemning the unrest. Writing on social platform X after a wave of clashes, he said escalation would be "irresponsible":
Fireworks, fires, violence near high schools: nothing justifies endangering students, staff, or police officers.
Sébastien Lecornu, French Prime Minister
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has struck a harder line, arguing the originally peaceful movement has been "hijacked" by outside agitators unconnected to the schools themselves, a characterization student groups reject.
The unrest comes against the backdrop of a wider budget standoff in Paris, where Lecornu's government is trying to push through deficit-cutting measures only weeks after the collapse of Bayrou's. Lecornu has pledged to resume talks with teachers' unions and student representatives, though no date for substantive negotiations has been set, and with nearly 400 schools still shut, the government is under pressure to show it can calm the protests before they widen further into the broader social movements that have repeatedly convulsed France this year.
