A 15-year-old lost a hand on Monday after picking up a device deployed by police, an incident unfolding against the backdrop of student-driven protests across France demanding better school conditions — a wave of action that has involved fires and blockades at certain locations while halting lessons at hundreds more.

The young person sustained injuries in Lens, a town in the north of the country, according to officials. According to a union representative within the police force, the individual appeared to have retrieved a sting-ball grenade deployed by officers managing crowd control, which then detonated while he was holding it. According to François-Xavier Lauch, the prefect for the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France, the 15-year-old receiving hospital treatment in Lille is no longer in a life-threatening condition.

A secondary school students' union had branded the Tuesday gatherings "Act III," and organisers anticipated a broader turnout, with digital calls for a "black week" of demonstrations already spreading in the days beforehand.

Figures released by the education ministry showed that upwards of 400 lycées — drawn from a national network of roughly 3,700 such upper-secondary institutions — had their doors either partly or fully shut that Monday. Since late September, students at hundreds of schools across France have been staging blockades at entrances, raising a range of grievances — among them a shortage of teaching staff, overloaded schedules, deteriorating facilities, and buildings ill-equipped to handle rising temperatures — prompting Alma, a pupil at the Lycée Charlemagne in central Paris, to tell journalists that the education system was not working as it should.

Demonstrations gathered pace across the period running up to the 2027 elections, the vote that will determine who takes over from President Emmanuel Macron. Officials moved to address protesters' grievances while simultaneously asserting that left-leaning activist organisations had assumed command of the demonstrations — a portrayal that Simon, enrolled at the Lycée Charlemagne, disputed, arguing that providing a digital platform would do little to dismantle the blockades or ease a discontent that had been accumulating over many years.

On Monday, the French Human Rights League (LDH) put forward a formal complaint that law enforcement had applied force against demonstrators — a group it noted included a substantial number of people under the age of legal majority — at a level beyond what circumstances warranted. At least six cases of alleged police misconduct have been referred for internal review, a person familiar with the matter told reporters on the basis that their identity would not be disclosed.

Dozens of students lined the pavement outside a Paris school, their demonstration drawing repeated horn blasts from passing drivers. A handful of pupils went inside to continue their classes, while those who stayed in the street outside Turgot high school in Paris held up a cardboard placard stating that they were forgoing their own lessons in order to deliver one.

Outside the Gustave Eiffel high school, a group of demonstrators launched fireworks toward officers, drawing a tear gas response, though conditions on the whole stayed largely orderly.

On 17 September, a high school in Creteil — a suburb outside Paris — became the point of origin for the movement, with students acting in solidarity with teachers who had walked off the job over understaffing and a shortage of resources. As the movement gathered pace and extended its reach across France, episodes of disorder arose on occasion — among them damage to bus shelters, fire set to school entrances, and physical confrontations between demonstrators and security personnel.

Figures released by the education minister put the number of school buildings set on fire or looted since the unrest began at 24. Of those taken into custody — a total exceeding 5,000 — roughly 87 in every 100 were under the age of 18.

On Sunday, Lecornu called on regional and municipal administrations to address staffing shortfalls stemming from prolonged teacher absences and vacant teaching posts. A Tuesday gathering with regional presidents was arranged to take up the question of renovating the nation's school infrastructure, much of which has fallen into poor repair.

Proposed legislation would require those found responsible for damaging public property to cover the cost of repairs out of their own pocket, rather than having those expenses met through state funds. Bregeon, serving as the government's spokeswoman, voiced support for the bill, pointing to incidents in which teenagers as young as 14 have set fire to bus shelters and their own schools as a reason to re-examine the boundaries of parental responsibility. Under the proposed legislation, Lecornu indicated, compensation amounts could be clawed back from family allowances and housing benefits, provided a floor for minimum income remains intact. CGT leader Sophie Binet characterised the measure as a populist gesture that, in her view, would ultimately place the heaviest burden on lower-income households.