Why France's High School Protests Have Erupted — and Why the Street Still Holds Sway

Protests by high school students have swept across France since late September, with pupils blocking entrances to lycées around the country to demand better funding for education. The unrest has turned violent in a number of locations, leaving hundreds of students, teachers and police officers injured, while thousands of people have been arrested — among them an unknown number of outsiders accused of exploiting the demonstrations for trouble-making.

At the centre of the discontent are the country's lycées, which educate students aged 15 to 18. Protesters say staffing shortages have left them without teachers for extended periods, and that buildings are falling apart. One Paris student, Madalena, told the BBC that some classes go several weeks without a replacement teacher, and described school buildings that became "boiling hot" during recent heat waves.

Beyond staffing and facilities, the grievances are varied. Some pupils object to bans on mobile phones, while others complain about school days that run until 6pm. One lycéen told France 2 that the schedule left no time for sleep or homework, since students do not get home until around 7pm. France's higher-education admissions platform, Parcoursup, has also become a flashpoint, with many students viewing the system as opaque and stressful.

The frustration has deep structural roots. Roughly 80% of each cohort now passes the baccalauréat, the school-leaving exam that guarantees a university place — though not necessarily at the institution or in the course a student wants. That has created intense competition for desirable programmes and fuelled anxiety around Parcoursup, which many regard as a confusing gatekeeper to the next stage of life.

Yet the question remains whether these complaints alone explain the scale and intensity of the movement. According to a recent report by the OECD, a club of developed nations, the French government actually spends more per lycée student than the EU average for upper-secondary schools. On teacher shortages, France's problems are acute but not unique — by OECD measures, fewer posts go unfilled than in comparable countries, even though French teachers receive relatively low pay.

The long school day is a genuine burden for French pupils, but it stems largely from extended lunch breaks and complicated timetables rather than from making up for shorter holidays; French holidays are not especially long by EU standards. As the source notes, the extended day has been a longstanding feature of French school life and hardly accounts for the current eruption. Nor does pressure from a dysfunctional higher-education system fully explain it: in most European countries, 80-90% of young people complete secondary education, and competition for good university places generates stress elsewhere too.

Underfunding, dilapidated buildings and fears about the future are real drivers of student anger, but they do not by themselves explain why the movement has become "unprecedented" in terms of the number of schools and pupils involved and the degree of violence, according to Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez. The scale is all the more striking given the risks participants are taking.

Blockading a school or university by threats or force is illegal and draws in police as well as vandals, known in French as casseurs. Pupils have found themselves caught up in crowd-control operations that are often heavy handed. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has insisted that security forces are not under orders to "confront high-school students," only to enforce the law — a statement that appears aimed at defusing criticism of police tactics.

To understand the pupils' tactics, observers say, one must look beyond the barricaded school gates to a political tradition. In France, power has often resided on the street as much as in elected bodies, and students understand this as well as anyone. The country's history offers repeated examples of student mobilisation forcing concessions from government.

In October 1990, a rape at a school in Seine-Saint-Denis — an area north of Paris that has been a focus of the present unrest — triggered mass rallies against underfunding and staff shortages. The government responded by releasing the equivalent of €1.2bn (£1bn) in today's money for lycées. In October 1998, 500,000 pupils marched across France over similar demands, winning almost €1bn to renovate schools and 14,000 extra staff.

On several occasions, student protests have defeated government reforms, including a university overhaul in 1986 and a lower youth minimum wage in 1994. Perhaps the most striking display of student power came in 2006, when a law designed to loosen hire-and-fire rules for under-26s — intended to tackle youth unemployment — was withdrawn. The measure had been passed by parliament and signed by then-President Jacques Chirac, but was scrapped after weeks of blockades in universities and lycées, often marred by violence.

French adults, too, have demonstrated how blockading roads can prevail over elected officials. The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) uprising of 2018-2019, which saw shops ransacked and government buildings attacked across the country, led the government to drop a rise in fuel taxes and approve €10bn in spending. But the street does not always win: in 1968, a heroic precedent cited by every French protest movement, a student uprising was ultimately brought to an end by an election.

Today's lycéens are heirs to a political culture in which demonstrators compete with elected officials to be seen as the true voice of the people. That inheritance helps explain why a set of grievances over staffing, buildings and admissions has escalated into a nationwide confrontation — and why the outcome may depend as much on politics as on policy.