More than 400 people, most of them children, have been detained in France on Tuesday after teenagers across the country blockaded their schools in protest at class sizes, teacher shortages and long timetables.
Interior minister Laurent Nunez told BFM TV: “440 were detained across national territory. We don’t have the final tally yet, but I’m told two-thirds led to police custody.”
The education ministry said 400 schools were affected by protests or disruptions on Tuesday, out of about 3,700 across the country.
The demonstrations began in Paris last week and have since escalated and spread across France. On Tuesday, high school pupils in Lille, northern France, set fire to dustbins and threw bottles, paving stones and other projectiles at police. Officers responded with teargas after protesters vandalised bus shelters and advertising hoardings.
“There is nothing that justifies showing up at institutions to demonstrate, masked, with your face disguised, carrying projectiles, and waiting for the intervention of law enforcement just to go after them,” Nunez said, adding that Tuesday’s clashes saw seven instances of hydrochloric acid being thrown at officers. A total of 48 police have been injured during the clashes across the country.
There were also confrontations between children and police in Bordeaux, Rennes and Nantes in western France, and Marseille in the south. At the Lamartine lycée, in the north of Paris, students waved placards complaining they had exhausting timetables. One read: “8am-6pm. More hours of lessons than sleep.”
In the Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, mayor Bally Bagayoko joined a protest of hundreds of students at the Lycee Paul-Eluard.
Leading students in a rendition of the national anthem, he described the protests as “completely legitimate” and complained that low-income areas received less resources than higher-income ones.
When a crowd formed, police carrying riot shields struck the students with batons, Agence France-Presse reported.
The prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, said earlier that escalating the demonstrations would be “irresponsible”. He posted on X: “Fireworks, fires, violence near high schools: nothing justifies endangering students staff or police.”
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), responded to ministers’ instructions to police, posting on X on Monday: “The high school students protesting are harmless. The Lecornu government has ordered a crackdown. This brutality is irresponsible and has a clear racist undertone. Hands off our youth. Elected officials and France Unbowed activists, step in wherever you can.”
Lecornu, responding on X, called Mélenchon’s intervention an “irresponsible escalation”. “The duty of an elected official of the republic is to protect young people and call for calm. Exploiting their anger for partisan purposes is wrong,” he wrote.
He added that Mélenchon’s accusation of racism was “an insult”.
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The protests came as French unions went on strike over the government’s budget plans, which include €54m in public spending cuts. Many public sector workers stopped work on Tuesday, including an estimated 40% of primary school teachers.
Ryad Rani, president of the Union Syndicale Lycéene (the high school students’ union) had called for a total blockade of France’s high schools as a parallel action but urged protesters to “remain peaceful”. He said the union was protesting about a “general lack of resources, overcrowded classrooms of sometimes 32-35 students and the shortage of teachers and staff”.
He said a circular sent by the interior and the education ministries to the police, telling them to maintain public order outside high schools “with a proportionate use of force”, was a “absolute scandal”.
“We’re talking about pupils of 15-18 years old and the government’s only response is automatic and institutionalised repression. It’s unacceptable. High school pupils are taking action to demand fairer and more equitable conditions and they’re being met with the BAC [anti-criminal brigade] and the CRS [riot police],” Rani said.
He added that some teachers and school staff had stood in front of students to protect them from police. “Those are the images you should be showing,” Rani told BFM TV.
Caroline Chevé, secretary general of the main teachers’ union the Fédération Syndicale Unitaire (FSU – Unitary Trade Union Federation), who joined protesters at a march in central Paris on Tuesday, said she understood pupils’ frustration. “They’re facing the same challenges as we are. They’re in overcrowded classrooms. Sometimes they don’t have enough teachers because of staffing shortages. They see the same reality as we do, and they’re angry,” Chevé said.
