More than 400 schools in France will be closed or partially closed on Monday as authorities prepare for another week of student protests.
Classes will be totally or partially suspended in 400 to 500 schools because security conditions “are not met”, declared Sunday the Minister of National Education, Édouard Geffray.
The minister said 24 schools were burned or ransacked and 78 education staff were injured. The number of school closures on Monday would be comparable to that of Friday, but the government is considering a “partial and gradual resumption of classes,” Geffray said.
Thousands of teenagers staged large demonstrations and set up barricades last week to protest what they see as underfunding and neglect of the education system.
Clashes with riot police have injured hundreds, led to more than 5,000 arrests, most of them minors, and shaken the centrist administration of President Emmanuel Macron.
There was a lull over the weekend, but protest organizers called for further demonstrations on Tuesday because the government had failed to take “concrete measures”.
Authorities say political agitators infiltrated the protest, which began at a Paris school on September 17 and spread to the capital and the rest of France.
“There are activists – particularly from the far left – who have infiltrated the high school movement, hijacked it from the students themselves and engaged in extreme violence,” Geffray said. “Obviously this poses a risk to both our staff and our students. »
Injured education staff members were deliberately targeted, “something we’ve never seen before,” Geffray said.
The protests surprised the government and confronted Macron with his worst crisis in months. Images of burning barricades and police using tear gas, batons and other methods to disperse protests dominated television news.
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Student grievances include overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings, poor teacher salaries, staff absences and an unequal system in which social background determines success. Other factors are an opaque and difficult online system for college applications as well as sweltering temperatures in classrooms during heat waves.
Protesters accused the state of disengaging from secondary education and cited harsh conditions such as leaks, cockroaches, collapsed ceilings and crumbling buildings. Others complain about long school days and a lack of teaching staff.
The government said the grievances were legitimate but condemned what it called “urban violence.” On Sunday, police arrested a 16-year-old in connection with an attack on a teacher in La Ciotat, a town on the south coast between Marseille and Toulon. The teacher, 59, was doused with gasoline and beaten during a demonstration on Friday.
The government is also under pressure from unions who called a one-day strike last week to force the new Prime Minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to rethink budget cuts and consider a form of wealth tax on the very rich. The CGT union urged workers to keep up the pressure by demonstrating this week.
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