At least 400 of France’s 3,700 high schools closed on Friday as student protests over crumbling classrooms and teacher shortages spread nationwide and erupted into clashes with the police and fires, the Ministry of National Education said.
Another 560 schools reported protests or disruptions, the ministry said. Education Minister Edouard Geffray declared students “in danger” as hundreds of injuries were reported across the country, according to Al Jazeera.
The demonstrations began last week at high schools in the Paris area, including Saint-Denis, where students blocked access to demand substitute teachers, more resources and better learning conditions in their lycées — the schools where French teenagers generally spend their final three years of secondary education, according to Al Jazeera’s account of the movement. The protests are over dilapidated school buildings, insufficient resources and stressful exams, according to Reuters reporting. The BBC said the grievances also include overcrowded classes.
The violence has grown day by day. At least 10 teachers, several students and 48 law enforcement officers were injured during Tuesday’s protests alone, in which protesters set garbage bins alight and damaged bus stops, the BBC reported. “Since the beginning of these demonstrations, we have had 76 injuries, both among students and personnel,” Mr. Geffray told RTL radio on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Arrests have mounted into the hundreds, most of them minors. More than 400 people were detained on Tuesday, and Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said another 625 were detained on Wednesday, TRT World reported. Mr. Nunez said officers had faced seven incidents in which people threw hydrochloric acid at them.
Students interviewed in Saint-Denis, a historically working-class suburb, described decaying conditions. “There are cockroaches and rats everywhere in the school,” Fadila, 17, told Reuters, saying classroom temperatures swung from sweltering to below freezing with the weather. “It’s always us ... who are suffering when, in Paris or in the countryside, they’re not in such a situation,” said Gamze, also 17.
The movement has become a political problem at a sensitive moment for the government. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu’s office convened a crisis meeting to address the protests, the Associated Press reported. The government has criticized the violence at some demonstrations but said the difficulties in high schools should be acknowledged and addressed.
President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters in Madrid, drew his own line between the complaint and the conduct. “High schools are meant to be open and to share knowledge,” he said, according to TRT World. “They are not meant to be blockaded or to have trash cans set on fire.”
By Friday morning, the count stood at 400 schools closed of roughly 3,700 nationwide, with 560 more reporting protests or some form of disruption.