Student protests continued across France on Friday, with teenagers confronting police amid reports of vandalism, fires and arrests, according to an Associated Press report by John Leicester and Samuel Petrequin.
The latest demonstrations brought more scenes of officers charging crowds, firing tear gas and making arrests. By early afternoon, the education ministry said protests were affecting 560 schools.
The unrest first erupted in the Paris region the previous week before spreading nationwide, including to smaller towns. Students have barricaded high-school gates and demonstrated with placards, while some have worn masks and goggles to protect themselves from police tear gas.
The protests have emerged as France faces a presidential election campaign. Candidates seeking to succeed President Emmanuel Macron in May have made the demonstrations a major political issue. Macron, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term, has criticized protest violence and what he described as the political manipulation of young demonstrators.
Students’ complaints are broad but focus mainly on the condition of schools. They say facilities are dilapidated, staffing is insufficient and schools are under-resourced. They also object to exhausting school days, which often begin at 8 a.m., and to the complexity of the university entrance system. Some university students joined the demonstrations during the week.
Education is among the most expensive areas in the state budget proposed by Macron’s government, with 65.5 billion euros, or £55 billion, set aside for schools in the next year. Despite that planned spending, broader concerns have grown that France’s school system is falling behind those of other countries and is failing to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds improve their social prospects.
According to the latest Programme for International Student Assessment report, performance gaps are widening between highly advantaged and highly disadvantaged students, while overall results in reading comprehension and mathematics have fallen sharply.
The government has repeatedly said it respects the right to peaceful protest. It has also ordered police to break up demonstrations that block access to schools and to stop violence and vandalism quickly.
Riot police have used tear gas and batons and have made arrests to disperse crowds. Police and school staff have been targeted with fireworks and other projectiles capable of causing injuries. The interior ministry said acid had been thrown in some cases and accused people intent on destruction and looting of attaching themselves to the high-school movement. The ministry described those people as “criminals and vandals” rather than “young people legitimately voicing their demands”.
Police made more than 1,900 arrests on Thursday, when 305 officers were injured, the interior ministry said. Demonstrations and confrontations continued on Friday. The unrest also spread to neighbouring Belgium, where about a dozen schools in Liege closed after violence in the city the previous day and six arrests.
The protests have also become a dispute over policing. Far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon has sided with the students and condemned police actions as “savagery” and repression. Officers have been suspected of firing crowd-control projectiles that may have caused some injuries suffered by protesters.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has called for wider police powers against rioters. Edouard Philippe, a conservative former prime minister and one of Le Pen’s main challengers for the presidency, condemned people who “break things, burn things or assault people”.
The demonstrations are taking place alongside other government decisions concerning young people and education. France banned smartphones from high schools when the school year began in September, with officials saying the measure would improve learning. The country also became the first in the European Union to ban social media platforms for children under 15, although France’s top court struck down that measure.
For now, the protests combine longstanding student concerns about schools with clashes over public order and competing political responses. The Associated Press report said the rapid spread of the demonstrations caught France off guard, while the continuing violence has made it more difficult for the government to separate peaceful demands from destructive acts carried out amid the wider movement.
