Hundreds of French Schools Shut as Student Protests Spread Nationwide

Hundreds of schools across France are expected to remain closed as a growing student protest over teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating school buildings has spread from the Paris region to cities across the country, with some demonstrations turning violent.

France’s Education Minister Édouard Geffray said more than 400 schools and other educational establishments were expected to be unable to operate normally on Friday, October 2, because of blockades or damage. The figure follows a much larger wave of mobilization the previous day: the Education Ministry said more than 1,000 high schools had been affected by protests or strikes on Thursday, including 222 blockades.

The movement began in the Paris region in late September, initially centred on complaints about staffing, classroom conditions and the quality of school facilities. It has since expanded nationwide, with students also raising concerns about long school days, pressure surrounding the university admissions system and what they regard as insufficient investment in education.

Some of the protests have remained peaceful, but others have descended into fires, damaged property and confrontations with police. Authorities reported incidents involving burning rubbish bins and fires near or at schools in several cities, including Paris, Marseille, Strasbourg, Nantes and Le Havre. Riot police have been deployed in several locations as officials attempt to prevent the unrest from spreading further.

The government says it recognizes that some of the students' complaints are legitimate but has drawn a distinction between peaceful protest and what it describes as urban violence. Education authorities have advised some schools to move lessons online where buildings cannot safely accommodate students because of blockades or damage. Geffray has also announced plans to meet education unions, student organizations and parents' representatives.

The scale of the disruption has also produced a political dispute over what is driving the demonstrations. People close to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told Reuters that intelligence agencies had concluded that politicians from the hard-left La France Insoumise movement were behind the mobilization. LFI lawmaker Louis Boyard rejected the allegation. The claim has not established that the wider student movement is centrally organized by the party, and reporting from schools indicates that students involved in the protests have expressed a range of grievances and political views.

The government's response has increasingly focused on public order as the protests have intensified. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said police were dealing with individuals moving between schools to encourage violence, while officials have reported hundreds of arrests. At the same time, some students, teachers and rights advocates have accused police of using excessive force during attempts to disperse demonstrations. Investigations into individual incidents are continuing.

Education Minister Geffray said 65 education workers had been injured, including school principals, according to Reuters and other reports. Students have also been injured, with authorities investigating some allegations involving police action. The competing accounts have added another layer of tension to a movement that began with education-related complaints.

The protests are unfolding against the backdrop of a government preparing its 2027 education budget. The Education Ministry's official budget document says the proposed package is intended to continue reducing class sizes, improve educational provision and strengthen teacher recruitment and training. The ministry also points to the recruitment reforms introduced for the 2026 session as part of an effort to make teaching more attractive.

Those measures have not removed concerns about staffing and conditions on the ground. The government says the 2026 teacher recruitment competitions produced substantially more candidates and improved the proportion of available posts filled. For the public second-degree system, the ministry reported that 96.1% of positions offered through the 2026 external competitions would be filled, compared with 90.6% the previous year.

The wider education system is also undergoing demographic change. France began the 2026 school year with about 11.6 million students and 1.2 million education personnel, according to the Education Ministry, while the number of pupils is falling as the country's population ages. The ministry expects the system to lose another 1.7 million pupils between 2025 and 2035.

Yet national averages do not necessarily reflect conditions in individual schools. Students and teachers taking part in the protests have described classrooms holding large numbers of pupils, staff vacancies, poorly maintained buildings and difficulties accessing support services. Reports from several schools indicate that the complaints vary considerably by location, meaning the current unrest cannot be reduced to a single issue.

The timing is also significant. France is approaching a presidential election period, and education has become part of a broader argument over public spending, social mobility and the future prospects of young people. The government has promised dialogue while insisting that violence and attacks on public property will not be tolerated.

For now, the immediate challenge is to restore normal teaching while addressing the concerns that brought thousands of students onto the streets in the first place. The protests have exposed a difficult gap between national education policies and the experience of pupils and staff in individual schools. How the government responds to that gap, while containing the violence and preserving the right to peaceful protest, could shape not only the remainder of the school year but the wider debate over France's investment in its next generation.