High-school protests in France have entered their third week. According to the office of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, 215 teenagers, 85 school staff and 715 police officers and gendarmes have been injured since the mobilization began. The authorities have promised to consider the students’ demands and to present a “roadmap” by the end of October on the state of school buildings, timetables and the transparency of the admissions system.
The movement began in mid-September with the blockade of a single school in the Paris suburbs and quickly spread to hundreds of lycées. Students, joined by parents, teachers and unions, are demanding more funding for education, citing teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings. On Tuesday, 6 October, the so-called “third act” of the protests took place. The Interior Ministry put the number of participants at 256,000, including 56,000 in Paris; organizers put the figure at about 450,000. Classes were fully or partly disrupted at 891 lycées — nearly one in four of roughly 3,700.
Marches in Marseille, Nantes and Toulouse were largely peaceful. In Paris, Lyon, Strasbourg and Rennes, police used tear gas, and water cannon in Rennes, as protesters set barricades on fire and threw objects. More than 6,000 people have been arrested since the movement began, most of them minors; cases are under way against about 1,800 people, including 1,483 minors.
The most serious injuries have been among teenagers. On Monday in Lens, in the Pas-de-Calais department, a 15-year-old lycée student lost a hand and part of his forearm when a police grenade exploded outside his school; the police inspectorate is investigating. Last week in Tours, a 16-year-old lost sight in one eye during a school blockade, and in Val-d’Oise a 14-year-old suffered a severe facial injury from a grenade launcher; the officer who fired it has been charged.
Education Minister Édouard Geffray called the demands “legitimate,” but said no grievance justifies violence. Lecornu condemned the clashes and said the movement had been hijacked by outsiders. Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have criticized the use of force against minors.
