France School Protests Escalate as Tear Gas Deployed in Paris and Marseille

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators flooded streets across France on Tuesday as a protest movement that began among high-school pupils widened to include their parents, university students and trade unions, prompting police to deploy tear gas in Paris and Marseille and water cannon in Rennes.

The escalation marks a significant broadening of a campaign that started in mid-September with localized anger over conditions in schools in Seine-Saint-Denis, a deprived suburb north of Paris, and has since metastasized into a nationwide expression of discontent with the government's handling of education.

In the capital, crowds of teenagers marched from the Place de la République, voicing demands for greater resources for schools and an end to what they described as police repression. Similar scenes played out in Lyon, where officers clashed with demonstrators, while in Marseille thousands of protesters wound through the city, pausing to chant before moving on as police lines shifted direction. Authorities also deployed water cannon in Rennes.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu condemned violence that had accompanied earlier demonstrations, disclosing that 215 students and 85 school staff had been injured since the protests began, along with 715 police officers. The government said disruption had affected 891 high schools on Tuesday — nearly a quarter of all lycées in the country — and estimated that more than 250,000 demonstrators had taken to the streets during the day. Student unions disputed those figures, putting the turnout at 450,000 and claiming that 1,800 high schools had been blockaded on what organizers branded "Act Three" of their movement.

The scale of the unrest has put the French government on edge, with the political calendar adding urgency to the crisis. In parliament, Lecornu accused the radical-left France Unbowed (LFI) party of attempting to "sow chaos" ahead of presidential elections due in seven months. President Emmanuel Macron, who is approaching the end of his second and final term, was scheduled to chair a meeting with ministers at the Élysée Palace on Tuesday evening to assess the situation.

The political stakes are heightened by the fact that LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon currently sits second in opinion polls, trailing only Marine Le Pen of the hard-right National Rally. The government's opponents on the left have sought to channel the energy of the school protests, while ministers have sought to portray the unrest as the work of agitators rather than a genuine grassroots movement.

Education Minister Édouard Geffray said he had appealed for dialogue from the outset rather than school blockades, and complained that "ultra-violent elements infiltrated the high-school student movements." He now faces mounting pressure to respond to the students' core demands. Measures offered so far — including a website for students to air grievances and an afternoon of internal discussion in schools scheduled for Friday — have done little to quell the unrest.

In Marseille, masked protesters seized bollards and bins in an attempt to barricade themselves against police, prompting riot officers to fire tear gas and disperse the crowd. But many participants insisted the movement was fundamentally peaceful. "Most of us aren't violent," said Alissa, a student in Marseille. "We're going to the streets because they've closed our schools... schools are falling apart." Her friend Sacha added that ceilings in the city's schools were leaking and conditions were generally poor, making sustained study difficult. "We will keep doing this until good measures are taken," he said.

The protests have been fueled by widespread concern over allegations of disproportionate force by police, with France's IGPN police inspectorate investigating multiple cases. One officer who fired a tear-gas grenade at a high-school student in Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, north-west of Paris, last week has been charged by prosecutors with "violence... resulting in mutilation or permanent disability."

The case centers on Eden, 14, who was part of a group blockading the Château d'Épluches lycée for 15-to-18-year-olds when he was struck in the face. His lawyer said he suffered a fractured jaw, broken upper teeth and the loss of four lower teeth. In a separate incident on Monday, a 15-year-old's hand was torn off after a so-called anti-encirclement grenade was fired in unclear circumstances near a school in the northern city of Lens.

Authorities maintain the teenager picked up the "sting ball" grenade, which then exploded, but students allege he was hit directly after an officer fired it. The grenade is classified as a non-lethal weapon, and the local prefect said the incident occurred when police were confronted by a group of 200 to 250 students throwing stones and fireworks. The competing narratives have deepened public skepticism about police conduct and added moral force to the protesters' demands.

What began as local frustration over overcrowded classrooms, a shortage of teaching staff and dilapidated school buildings has evolved into a broader challenge to the government's education policies and its approach to public order. The movement has extended to some universities, and France's largest union, the CGT, has announced that further protests involving school and university students are planned for Thursday.

With no sign that the protesters' demands are being met and the government's concessions so far failing to gain traction, there appears little prospect of the movement ending soon. The coming days will test whether Lecornu's government can open a credible dialogue with students and unions, or whether the unrest will continue to grow and further destabilize an already fragile political landscape in the run-up to the presidential election.