Why France's High School Protests Have Spiralled Into an "Unprecedented" Movement

Since late September, high schools across France have been gripped by a wave of student protests over what demonstrators describe as chronic underfunding in education. Pupils have blocked entrances to numerous lycées—the country's upper-secondary schools for 15 to 18-year-olds—and the movement has drawn in hundreds of thousands of participants nationwide. In certain locations, the unrest has escalated into violence, leaving hundreds of students, teachers and police officers injured, while thousands of people have been arrested, among them an unknown number of troublemakers from outside the school community.

The immediate grievances cited by protesters centre on staffing shortages and deteriorating school facilities. Madalena, a student in Paris, told the BBC that classes sometimes go without a teacher for several weeks when no replacement is provided. She also described conditions inside her school buildings as unbearably hot during recent heat waves, pointing to a lack of adequate infrastructure. These complaints are echoed by pupils elsewhere, who say the state has neglected the day-to-day environment in which they are expected to study.

Other frustrations add to the discontent. Some students object to bans on mobile phones in schools, while others resent timetables that extend until 18:00. One lycéen interviewed by France 2 explained that arriving home at 19:00 leaves virtually no time for sleep or homework. Parcoursup, the national online platform that assigns places in higher education, has also become a lightning rod for anger, with many students regarding its selection process as opaque and stressful.

The roots of this frustration run deep. Roughly 80% of each age cohort now passes the baccalauréat, the school-leaving exam that guarantees a university place—though not necessarily at the institution or course a student prefers. This has produced intense competition for desirable programmes and widespread anxiety focused on Parcoursup, which critics say lacks transparency.

Yet analysts question whether these grievances alone can explain the scale and intensity of the current 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 education. Teacher shortages, while genuinely acute, appear no worse than in other countries; by OECD measures, fewer posts go unfilled in France, even though French teachers receive comparatively low pay.

The long school day is likewise a longstanding feature of French education rather than a new provocation. It stems largely from extended lunch breaks and complicated timetables, not from making up for holidays, which are not especially lengthy by EU standards. Pressure created by a dysfunctional higher-education system exists elsewhere too: in most European countries, 80 to 90% of young people complete secondary education, and competition for good university places generates stress across the continent.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has described the movement as "unprecedented" in terms of the number of schools and pupils involved, as well as the degree of violence. That assessment points to something beyond funding shortfalls and dilapidated buildings. The scale of the protests is all the more striking because participants are taking considerable risks. Blockading a school or university by threats or force is illegal, drawing in police as well as casseurs—vandals who exploit the chaos—and pupils have found themselves caught up in crowd-control operations that are often heavy-handed. About 500 people were arrested during Tuesday's unrest alone.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has insisted in his latest message that security forces are not under orders to "confront high-school students," only to enforce the law. His reassurance has done little to calm tensions, however, as images of riot police clashing with young protesters and using tear gas have circulated widely.

To grasp the pupils' tactics, one must look beyond the barricaded school gates to a distinctly French political tradition. In France, power has often resided on the street as much as in elected institutions, and students understand this as well as anyone. History offers ample precedent. 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, ultimately persuading the government to release the equivalent of €1.2bn in today's money for lycées.

Eight years later, in October 1998, half a million pupils marched across France over similar demands, securing 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—passed by parliament and signed by then-President Jacques Chirac—was withdrawn after weeks of blockades in universities and lycées, often marred by violence.

French adults have demonstrated that blockading roads can prevail over elected officials. The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) uprising of 2018-2019, during which shops were ransacked and government buildings attacked across the country, led the government to abandon a fuel tax rise and approve €10bn in additional spending. Yet the street does not always win. In 1968—a heroic precedent cited by virtually every French protest movement—a student uprising was ultimately brought to an end by election. The lycéens are heirs to a political culture in which demonstrators compete with elected officials to be seen as the true voice of the people. Whether that inheritance will deliver results this time remains an open question.