Dozens of people have been injured and hundreds arrested, most of them children, officials said, in a wave of student demonstrations against teacher shortages and dilapidated buildings which on Wednesday impacted high schools nationwide. The demonstrations and blockades, which began last week and coincided on Tuesday with a broader public-sector strike, have become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for France.
On Thursday, the government will unveil the country's 2027 budget, which is expected to involve spending cuts aimed at easing pressure on government finances. In Saint-Denis, a large suburb north of Paris, students stood outside the gates of their school near a fire that had been set as police looked on, while in Lyon and Lille television images showed people throwing projectiles at lines of police officers.
"There are cockroaches and rats everywhere in the school," Fadila, a 17-year-old student, told reporters. She said temperatures in classrooms could swing from sweltering to below freezing, depending on the weather. "We can't work in those conditions," she said. According to the OECD global policy forum, French spending on education was in the middle of the range among member countries and increased between 2015 and 2022, but its share of the budget has slightly decreased.
France's Education Minister Edouard Geffray told RTL radio that there had been 76 injuries, both among students and personnel, since the beginning of the demonstrations. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told broadcaster BFM that some 440 people were detained over the high school protests on Tuesday alone, most of them minors. French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters in Madrid that high schools are meant to be open and to share knowledge, not to be blockaded.