Hundreds of schools to close on Monday as education protests rock France

Up to 500 schools across France will be totally or partly closed on Monday because of a wave of pupil protests that has shaken the country, the education minister said.

Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400-500” high schools as the security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, said Education Minister Edouard Geffray on Sunday, adding that 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the movement.

He described the closures as chiefly a security precaution ahead of large-scale protests that the leaders of the movement have called for Tuesday.

The teenagers at French secondary schools, known as lycées, say their studies are being ruined by high teacher absence rates, overlong school days and dilapidated facilities, as well as other grievances.

Geffray said the number of schools affected on Monday would be comparable to the figure from Friday but vowed there would be a “partial, progressive return to lessons”.

More than a third of the 468 schools in the wider Ile-de-France region surrounding the capital will be closed on Monday as a result of the protests, Valerie Pecresse, the right-wing president of the region, told broadcaster Franceinfo.

The movement began at a Paris school on September 17 but grew last week into nationwide protests marked in places by outbursts of violence involving teenagers and security forces, which have used tear gas and truncheons against the pupils.

“There are activists – particularly from the far-left – who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves and engaged in extreme violence,” Geffray claimed.

“Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,” he said, adding that 78 education staff members had been wounded – “something we have never seen before”.

“They were deliberately targeted because they were employees of the national education system,” Geffray said.

Organisers have called for the protests to continue on Tuesday, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from the government.

In a bid to address the protesters’ concerns, Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu set out a timetable on Sunday urging local authorities to prioritise filling gaps left by long-term absences and unfilled posts.

He also called a meeting for Tuesday with regional presidents to discuss overhauling the country’s often dilapidated school buildings.

More than 5,000 people, 85 per cent of them minors, have been arrested since the start of the movement.

Critics have accused the police of using heavy-handed tactics against children.

A 16-year-old was detained on Sunday over the assault of a teacher in the southern town of La Ciotat. The teacher, 59, was struck and doused with petrol on the sidelines of a high school pupil protest on Friday.

A video circulating on social media appears to show an individual dressed entirely in black with a masked face splashing liquid on to the teacher, who then clutches his face while a tree burns nearby.

A group of youths were last week filmed beating and kicking a policeman on the ground in Belfort in eastern France in images that caused an outcry among officials.

Two youths, Bulgarian nationals aged 15 and 17, have been arrested and investigated for suspected aggravated violence, the prosecutor said.

One of the youths, whom the policeman had tried to arrest before being beaten, has now filed his own attempted murder complaint, his lawyer said.

The France branch of Amnesty last week slammed “disproportionate police violence” in tackling the demonstrations and said pupils must be allowed to express their grievances.

“Authorities must allow young people to exercise these rights without fear of being hit by tear gas grenades or batons, or being arbitrarily taken into police custody,” said Amnesty France president Anne Savinel-Barras.

But Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said security forces “are not cracking down on young people” but rather “protecting” school and university students wishing to “peacefully voice their demands”.