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Student protests that began in mid-September at an educational institution in Paris have grown into nationwide unrest and a social crisis. France’s Interior Ministry said more than 250,000 people took to the streets across the country on Tuesday, while protest organizers put the number of demonstrators at 450,000.
Operative Information Center-OMM reports that, amid deepening political tensions as President Emmanuel Macron approaches the end of his term, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has said an urgent package of measures to address the crisis will be announced by the end of the month.
More than 40,000 submissions were sent in a short time to a dedicated digital platform established to collect students’ complaints.
Student protesters and parents are objecting to run-down school infrastructure, buildings that fail to meet sanitation standards and lack heating, as well as chronic staff shortages. According to trade union reports, more than half of the country’s schools face staff deficits, hundreds of hours of lessons are not being taught, and classroom overcrowding has reached critical levels.
The additional 1.2 billion euros allocated by the government to the education sector is said to be insufficient amid inflation. Teachers’ salaries have fallen to around the minimum wage, sharply reducing interest in the profession. The Île-de-France region is described as the administrative area allocating the least of its budget to education. The opaque mechanisms of the “Parcoursup” university admissions system and excessively long school days are also among the main sources of discontent.
As part of the protests, hundreds of schools have been blockaded, and police have dispersed demonstrations using force. More than 200 people have sustained serious injuries following the use of crowd-control weapons, tear gas and rubber bullets. After incidents in which one young person lost an eye and a 15-year-old suffered a hand amputation, Amnesty International strongly condemned what it called the disproportionate use of force by French law enforcement officers.
Eighteen internal investigations have been opened into alleged police violence. The Interior Ministry said 24 school buildings were set on fire on Sunday, while Education Minister Édouard Geffray said more than 5,000 people had been detained during the unrest.
French authorities are seriously concerned that this wave, which began among young people, could merge with a decade of broader social discontent directed at the Élysée Palace and Macron’s administration and turn into an unmanageable uprising. Student protests in France have previously drawn attention to education policy and school conditions; the current demonstrations have also raised wider concerns about public services and social tensions.
