School protests sweeping France cause 'heaviest toll in decades'

Highlights:

• Clashes in Rennes, Lyon and Strasbourg
• Protests over conditions in France's 3,700 high schools
• Government has responded with riot police

Demonstrations swept across France on Tuesday as teachers and parents took to the streets with high school pupils on the biggest day of what Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu described as the most violent student demonstrations in decades.

Police fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse violent groups on the fringes of marches in Paris, Strasbourg, Rennes and Toulouse, among other cities. The marches drew more than 250,000 people in dozens of cities, the interior ministry said, though organisers said 450,000 had participated.

The protests, in which a teenager lost a hand on Monday, were the latest manifestation of public anger in a country where support for populist parties on the far right and far left has surged ahead of a presidential election in the spring.

The government is under pressure to tame public debt amid weak growth, and has struggled with basic tasks such as passing a budget since President Emmanuel Macron's allies lost their majority in a 2024 parliamentary vote.

Lecornu told lawmakers at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had so far been injured in clashes, "the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system". His office said more than 700 police officers were also hurt.

Macron has convened Lecornu and other senior ministers at an emergency meeting on Tuesday, broadcaster BFM reported.

US President Donald Trump said the protests were evidence of "out of control" migration in France. "This isn't about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country," he posted on Truth Social.

The students' demands do not concern religion or immigration, but focus instead on understaffing and lack of funding. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally party has not linked the protests to France's migration policy. Lecornu's office did not respond to a request for comment.

In Marseille and Nantes, protesters held up handmade signs bearing phrases such as "The state has killed national education". In Toulouse, parents linked arms at the front of a march through the city.

Paris police said clashes in the capital resulted from some 300 people, most hooded or masked, facing off against security forces, and that the protest generally unfolded without major incident elsewhere. Several storefronts were damaged.

The Interior Ministry said 488 people had been arrested and 48 security personnel were injured on Tuesday.

Maintenance complaints

The student protests began in September in the deprived suburbs of Paris before spreading nationwide.

Students complain about schools facing basic maintenance problems, from water leaks to rat infestations.

"There is such a gap between the elites and us," said Hugo Vetzel, a recent high-school graduate in Strasbourg.

The High School Students Union said more than half of France's high schools were blockaded or had closed for the day. Some local education authorities have tried to move classes online.

Rights groups, students and parent groups have accused authorities of using disproportionate force against minors. The government says the protest movement has been hijacked by outsiders and in some places deteriorated into urban violence.

More than 1,800 people are being prosecuted for unspecified crimes, including 1,483 minors, the justice ministry said on Monday.

"They want to divide the young people into good and bad protesters," said Omar Slaouti, a high-school teacher in Argenteuil, a north-western suburb of Paris. "If there were no rubbish bins on fire, the government would not have stepped back and become aware of the issues at stake."

Prime minister promises a response

Lecornu has ordered his ministers to tackle the students' leading demands. Those include ensuring absent teachers are replaced, reviewing the length of the 8 am to 6 pm school day and the need for longer lunch breaks.

The government will also look at repairs needed to ageing school buildings, said Lecornu, who demanded ministers send in their first proposals by the end of October.

Parent Emilie Lhomme said at a protest outside the Helene Boucher school in Paris that the government's words were not enough: "That's all fine and dandy, but that's not what's going to change the daily lives of our children," she said.

Finding spare cash to implement educational reforms will be difficult.

The government is under pressure to try to narrow a ballooning budget deficit as investor concerns about France's growing debt, weak growth and reluctance to rein in spending push the cost of borrowing higher. The yield on France's 10-year bonds briefly hit a 24-year high of over 5% last week.

The surge in French borrowing costs has started to spill into the broader euro area, with the sliding euro currency the latest alarm bell for policymakers. Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.

Le Pen, the far-right eurosceptic populist leading the presidential race ahead of next spring's election, set out plans to slash public spending if elected, seeking to establish her fiscal credibility as the bond market crisis deepens.

French spending on education has lagged inflation and the country's students are trailing their OECD peers in overall performance, data from the PISA 2025 assessment shows.