'We're fed up': Paris students rise up in a movement that shows no sign of slowing

If the French government was hoping to drive its protesting high schoolers back into their classrooms with a whiff of tear gas, it hasn’t worked. 

Hundreds of thousands of students and their supporters took part in nationwide demonstrations, barricading school entrances and marching through France's major cities. 

The interior ministry estimated that a quarter of a million people took part on Tuesday; organisers maintain it was almost twice that. 

High schoolers have been blocking access to hundreds of schools across the country since mid-September, protesting what they say is a lack of teaching staff, harsh timetables and run-down buildings ill-equipped to deal with the worsening heatwaves that now stifle the country each summer. 

Why the violence surrounding surprise movement

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Accusing the movement of descending into "urban violence" as some demonstrators set fire to school buildings and allegedly assaulted staff, the government told the police last week not to hold back from using all the "intermediary" (non-lethal) weapons at their disposal to re-open the schools. 

The ensuing crackdown has been severe. Widely circulated footage has shown a 14-year-old boy set upon by three police officers, with one of whom firing a tear gas grenade point-blank into his face, knocking most of his teeth out and fracturing his jaw.

A 15-year-old boy in the northern town of Lens had his hand blown off up to the elbow by a sting-ball grenade; while a 16-year-old in Tours lost the use of his right eye to what the local prosecutor said was likely a projectile fired by riot police. 

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said Tuesday that 215 students and 85 teaching staff had been wounded in the protests, as well as 715 police officers. More than 5,000 people have been arrested since the movement began – the overwhelming majority of them minors.

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A number of France's trade unions have called for members to throw their support behind the protesting students Tuesday to shield them from possible police violence.

True to their word, members of the left-wing Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) formed a human chain between riot police and high schoolers barricading the Lycée Hélène Boucher on the eastern edge of Paris. It was one of dozens of occupations that students had planned for the day – marking "Act III" of a movement that shows no signs of slowing.

Class struggle

At the Lycée Sophie Germain in Paris’s winding Marais district, students choked off one end of the narrow street with a blockade of upturned bins, steel railings and chain-link fences. 

Students crowded the front doors of the high school, cardboard signs held high. A portable speaker passes from hand to hand – the students are singing, rapping, dancing as one body. 

Between songs, they chant well-worn slogans – “Siamo tutti antifascisti” (We are all anti-fascists), “Aux armes!” (To arms!) and “La jeunesse emmerde le Front National!” (a somewhat vulgar attack on the far right – it's probably best if you Google this one). 

Unlike at other barricades piling up in front of high schools across France, there’s not a police officer in sight. 

Bachir, 17, said the people who organised the barricade had come to an understanding with the authorities.

“The police said that as long as there aren’t any problems with fires, or firework-launchers or anything like that – as long as it’s peaceful – they won’t do anything,” he said.

It seems a shaky truce. At one point, a police van crawls up the main avenue, coming to a halt in front of the chain-link barricade. A few of the apparent organisers hurry down to conduct a quick negotiation through the van’s rolled-down window. The van keeps moving. 

The ivy-draped walls of the Marais couldn’t feel further away from the working-class outer suburbs of Paris where the school protests first took root in mid-September. 

Like many of the students barricading their schools across the capital, Bachir said he wanted to help draw attention to the widening socio-economic gulf between Paris and its sprawling banlieues. 

“Conditions are terrible in the suburbs,” he said. “There aren’t enough resources, there aren’t enough teachers, and the class sizes are too large. Most high school buildings date back to the 1970s, but only 14 percent have been renovated or rebuilt” in the past 10 years, he highlighted. 

“We’re talking about young people’s education, about the future – we just can’t leave education in this state,” he added.

'Tense' atmosphere as tens of thousands join French student protests

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Léa, a student from Lycée Lamartine in Paris’s 9th arrondissement (district), said she was hoping that the growing movement would put pressure on the government to rethink its funding priorities.

“That they put more money into education rather than funding military operations or Bastille Day parades that no one gives a stuff about,” she said. “It would be a lot more beneficial for the students, and also for the teachers. There’s one teacher for 40 students in some classes, and it’s not okay – especially when it’s 40 degrees (104°F).”

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Like many of the high schoolers and their supporters who poured into the streets of Paris on Tuesday, she was incensed by the severity with which the police had responded to the protests.

“I find it completely unacceptable. One guy lost his hand, another lost an eye, another his teeth – and no one has been [held accountable] for any of it,” she said. “Even if it was the students who insulted them or threw a couple of punches first, they’re still 14, 15, 16-years-old up against trained police officers in their 40s armed with batons. It’s not OK.”

But Bachir said he had not been surprised by the heavy-handedness of the police response.

“The police, they’re happy – they’re just there to have a bit of a scrap,” he said. “I know the police very well – they lose their tempers quickly. My old high school was in the suburbs, and the police – they were really just looking for a fight.”  

A long march   

At the Lycée Hélène Boucher, the human chain has been broken. Police have cleared the barricade from the school doors, and a line of armed and armoured riot police have herded the die-hard remnants into the middle of the avenue between lines of rusting chestnut trees. 

They advance in stages, driving the stragglers back into the city. When they’ve pushed them back to Place de la Nation, they pile into their vans and pull away. 

So begins the long march to Place de la République. A few dozen demonstrators take to the middle of the street, making their slow way along to Père Lachaise cemetery and curving around towards the city centre. 

As they go, they are joined by students who have drifted away from other barricades across the city. They raise their hands, and chant, and clap, and the passing drivers sound their horns to the beat of their hands. 

Towards the back, a few marchers stop from time to time to drag a bin into the street and upend it. Passersby step in, and the bins are back on the pavement before the march has moved ten metres.

A young teenager stops to set the corner of a discarded board of plywood on fire, to general derision. It smoulders, catches, and is doused by a man who hurries up with half a bottle of water. 

The pace quickens as they draw closer to Place de la République – someone has spotted the lines of riot police forming behind them, cutting off their retreat with a wall of reinforced plastic shields. In the street ahead, a line of police officers are searching people's bags before they let them pass.

Probably not by coincidence, the march takes a sharp left turn down a side street. A police squad takes off after them, pushing an unlucky few up against the wall to go through their backpacks.

They confiscate a few plastic vials of saline solution – used by demonstrators to flush tear gas from their eyes – and the mood turns ugly.

A heavily armoured officer snaps at one of the demonstrators: "Go on, get lost, gauchiasse," – a pejorative word for people with left-wing views. 

'Taking up the cause'

At Place de la République, the mood could not be more different. Avenue Voltaire is heaving with high schoolers, university students, teachers, parents, trade unionists. The march had started half an hour earlier, and more students are still pouring into the square. 

Gilles, a secondary school teacher in the suburb of Saint-Denis, said that France's high schools were not the only part of the education system to suffer from a lack of funding.

"There's an overall lack of staff, of education assistants, of medical and social services staff in secondary schools," he said. "Some of the buildings are run-down – and it's the same across all levels, from primary school onward."

He said he was delighted to see so many young people speaking out about school conditions.

"It's great. We went on a lot of demonstrations in 2023, 2024, for the 93 Emergency Plan, which highlighted the staff shortage," he said. "And it’s great that the demands of teachers and educational staff are now being echoed by high school students. It’s fantastic that they’re taking up the cause."

Thibault, a secondary teacher working in Versailles west of Paris, said he had gone on strike to support the student movement. 

"We're fed up, everyone is tired, the students can't take it anymore," he said. "High schoolers are at school from eight in the morning to six o'clock at night with just half an hour for a break – you can't even do that under French labour law."

But while he was proud to see so many students taking to the streets, he didn't think it had much chance of bringing about the changes he thought were needed.

"To be honest? I don't expect anything anymore, because the government will never listen to us," he said. "Instead, they take advantage of the fact that there are two or three people breaking things to say, 'See? This movement isn't legitimate.'"