Tens of thousands of French students protest school crisis as more than 5,000 arrested in clashes

Maisa, a 17-year-old in Aubervilliers north of Paris, joined tens of thousands of other students and their supporters this week in protests that spread across France over dilapidated schools, classroom overcrowding and teacher shortages, in the largest school protest movement in decades.

Protests raged at more than 1,200 French high schools this week, Reuters reported on Saturday. Police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets in some cases, and more than 5,000 people were arrested. Some protesters were seriously hurt, with eye injuries, broken teeth and blows to the head. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called it a “climate of unacceptable violence” and called for order (Reuters via CNA).

The movement began last week in the Paris suburbs, where poverty levels are high, and has spread to Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg, Tours and Lille. It has become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for the government, which announced deeply unpopular spending cuts in its 2027 budget on Thursday. The education budget is set to increase by a below-inflation 1.7 per cent to €65.53 billion, excluding teacher pensions. Education Minister Edouard Geffray said education remained a priority and attributed the below-inflation increase to population decline.

At Lycee Le Corbusier in Aubervilliers, classes including maths, humanities, English and sport have been cancelled since the start of the academic year because of teacher shortages, according to elected parent representative Karima Kara Ali. “Last year I took the high school French exam without a French teacher, and teachers have a huge impact,” Maisa said.

The CGT labour union said two-thirds of high schools in Seine-Saint-Denis took part in protests on Thursday, and a union survey found two-thirds of schools in the department have unfilled teacher positions. Louise Paternoster of the CGT’s education union blamed government cuts of 3,256 teacher positions nationwide in 2026.

The last nationwide high school protest movement of comparable scale demanding more funding came in the 1990s, according to Clemence Cardon-Quint, a professor at Paul Valery University who researches education funding.