More than 400 schools and colleges across France remained closed on Friday as student protests over education grievances continued – some turning violent.
The Minister of National Education, Edouard Geffray, told the press that 735 educational establishments were “affected” on Friday, or “30% less than yesterday”.
He said three emergency service members were injured while responding, again an improvement on “yesterday’s 31”, and condemned “occasional acts of extreme violence” within the wider protest movement.
Protests against the shortage of teachers, the dilapidation of school buildings and the lack of teaching materials broke out in high schools (equivalent to American high schools) in the Paris region last month before spreading across the country this week.
Government ministers have tried to strike a balance between empathetic messages to frustrated youth ahead of presidential elections and clear calls for calm in their public messages.
“It is urgent that calm returns to high schools and universities,” the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, declared online. “Yes, the right to demonstrate is inalienable. But violence is inexcusable and the cynical exploitation of youth for political purposes is irresponsible.”
Some of the approximately 400 closed schools or colleges suffered damage during the protests, one of the worst affected being the Mandela high school in Nantes, which was to remain closed until mid-October after a fire in the entrance hall.
Student protests in France: damage, injuries, arrests
Police made about 2,000 arrests and dozens of people were injured, including 40 high school principals, according to Geffray.
Fires broke out at at least two high schools on Thursday, while teachers were allegedly inadvertently doused with gasoline at a third in the southern city of Marseille, authorities said.
At least one car was set on fire in Strasbourg, in the east of the country, while riot police clashed with youths in Toulouse, in the southwest.
In the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in the southeast, authorities said that “at least 25 million euros” of damage was caused on their territory alone. The Ile de France region which includes Paris estimated the damage on Friday at around 7 million euros.
But students have also criticized what they see as a heavy-handed police response.
“You don’t want to hear our words; you just shoot tear gas,” one student wrote on a sign outside the school. Voltaire High School in the center of Paris.
Minister Geffray told the media on Friday morning that “violent individuals” were “infiltrating student groups” and “taking the movement hostage” and called on parents to prevent their children from joining the protests.
“What matters now is ensuring that our children are no longer on the streets because they are in danger,” he said.
Geffray met with student and union representatives later Friday. After that meeting, leaders of student groups renewed their call for “concrete” responses to their demands, said protests must continue, but also called on demonstrators to refrain from violence or vandalism.
“If I could send a clear message to high school students: be intelligent. We are, once again, giving the cause to those who wish to exploit and discredit our cause. Be non-violent”, Nahanael Combary of High School Revival the group said.
The government accuses LFI of extreme left
According to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, French domestic intelligence services declared Thursday during a crisis meeting that the movement had been exploited by politicians from the left party. Insoumise France (France Insoumise or LFI) – who denied these allegations.
Veteran LFI leader and 2027 presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon supported the protests but called on students to use non-violent methods.
“Students, teachers and educational staff face the same state of neglect and their positions and demands must be respected,” he wrote in a statement earlier this week, calling for “a disciplined fight, without panic or irritation.”
At the same time, student union organizations have called for a day of mass protest next Tuesday, October 6, under the slogan: “Police out of schools! No to the repression of student mobilization!”
“The police have no place in front of schools,” we read in a press release. “We support the ongoing mobilization and call for its strengthening.”
Edited by: Karl Sexton
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