Trade unions are set to march alongside students in Paris on Tuesday, with organisers anticipating tens of thousands of participants after several days of confrontations between protesters and police. Between 20,000 and 40,000 people were expected to gather in Paris for the demonstration, according to police estimates.
Blockades at the entrances of hundreds of upper-secondary schools — those catering to students aged 15 to 17 — have been under way since late September, with participating pupils pointing to understaffed classrooms, overstretched timetables, facilities in poor repair, and buildings ill-equipped to cope with rising temperatures. Demonstrations were anticipated at locations nationwide on Wednesday, with figures from the education ministry and a student union showing that 589 of the nation's 3,700 lycées and 32 universities had seen teaching activity halted.
Protesters set alight bins and bus shelters, and physical confrontations broke out between demonstrators and officers in protective gear, who deployed batons, tear gas, and crowd-control munitions. Official figures place the toll at 215 students and 715 police officers hurt across the course of the movement, among them a 15-year-old boy who lost a hand on Monday after picking up a sting-ball grenade that had been deployed by officers in riot gear.
Video captured at the location showed a number of bystanders gathered around the boy, attending to him where he had fallen on the ground. Footage from the area captured him departing on foot. Separate accounts put the injury as extending to the elbow, though no verification of that detail has come through.
A group of individuals set fire to the entrance of a Paris school on Monday, leaving both staff and students unable to leave the building. Video recorded near the entrance of the Vauquelin secondary school in Paris captured a group of people deliberately starting a fire at the building's front doors. Fire was visible through broken glass at the building's main entrance, and fire was also visible rising from the direction of a blockade. Portable extinguishers in the hands of two men offered little resistance as the fire continued to spread through the structure, with people positioned behind the barricade observed tossing objects into it, adding to the fire.
According to news outlets covering the incident, roughly 100 pupils had to be moved out of the building while protesters directed fireworks toward firefighters carrying out the evacuation. Carole Zerbib, who leads the school as its director, recounted how a group wearing hoods and face coverings pushed through the front entrance and subsequently started a fire on the grounds.
On Monday morning, pupils at Gaston Berger high school in the northern city of Lille gathered to obstruct access points at the building's entrances. Flames caught at the front gate of Victor Hugo high school, a secondary institution located in Caen, a town in the north-west of France, where people in the crowd gathered debris and other bulky objects into a heap, which was then set alight.
Teenagers from a nearby secondary school spilled onto the pavement along a central Paris street, their presence prompting a chorus of car horns from passing drivers. Outside the Turgot secondary school in Paris's third arrondissement, a cardboard placard carried the message that those gathered were forgoing their own lessons in order to deliver one, while a handful of students filtered back through the doors to continue their classes.
In Bordeaux, a south-western city, a portion of the student body returned to their seats in class while others remained gathered outside, facing rows of officers in protective gear. Outside the Gustave Eiffel high school, a portion of the gathered protesters directed fireworks toward officers, drawing an intermittent tear gas response from the line of police.
These developments are unfolding with the 2027 presidential vote — the contest to determine who will govern after Emmanuel Macron completes the two-term limit on his tenure — now only months away. The office of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu put out a statement urging protesters to keep gatherings orderly, asking that opposition activity take place within legal and democratic channels.
CGT leader Sophie Binet indicated that union members intended to stand alongside secondary-school pupils during the action. Trade unions have lodged formal complaints alleging that officers responded to demonstrators with a level of force beyond what the situation warranted.
