What to Know About France's High School Protests

Students angry over the state of the country's education system have blockaded hundreds of schools. Thousands of protesters have been arrested and dozens of people injured.

Thousands of angry students have blockaded high schools around France in recent days to protest the state of education, leading to escalating violence and clashes with the riot police.

Dozens of people have been injured since the protests began late last month, and thousands have been arrested, most of them minors, officials said. The protests erupted in a heated climate, as the government tries to pass a belt-tightening budget and as France gears up for presidential elections next year.

Over a third of France's roughly 3,700 high schools were closed or disrupted on Thursday, and over 400 were closed on Friday, Édouard Geffray, France's education minister, told BFMTV.

Teachers' unions and some political figures have joined the protests in solidarity. The French government has called some of the students' demands legitimate but has condemned "urban violence" and accused a far-left party, France Unbowed, of whipping up the demonstrations. The party has rejected the accusation.

Some students have distanced themselves from the violence, but there are calls for more protest in the coming week.

Here's what to know:

Why are the students demonstrating?

Students are frustrated by crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, overloaded schedules, a shortage of teachers and staff, and underfunded schools, according to the student union that is one of the movement's main organizers.

Some are also calling for the abolition of state-run admissions platforms for higher education and university that they call unfairly selective.

"We're not poorly educated, we're just not listened to," read one banner this week in front of a school in Seine-St.-Denis, a working-class suburb north of Paris that is one of the protest movement's hot spots.

"Classrooms are not ventilated, and we can barely open the windows," Issam Makhloufi, 15, a student at Rosa Parks High School in St.-Denis, told The New York Times.

Unions and left-wing parties have seized on the protests as part of a wider expression of discontent as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who is term-limited, reaches the end of his time in office.

"The public education system is in a catastrophic state after 10 years of Emmanuel Macron," Sophie Vénétitay, the leader of a teachers' union that has joined the students' protests, said on the sidelines of a recent march. "It is lacking everything."

Have the protests become violent?

Many of the demonstrations began peacefully but escalated as protesters shot off mortar-style fireworks and attacked schools and other infrastructure, resulting in millions of dollars' worth of damage, officials said.

Hundreds of schools have been affected by the recent blockades, officials said, with the number growing as protests widened from the suburbs of Paris to Marseille, Lyon, and other cities.

The police arrested nearly 2,000 people on Thursday and more than 1,700 on Friday, Laurent Nuñez, France's interior minister, told BFMTV. Rights groups, including Amnesty International, criticized the use of tear gas and stun grenades to disperse minors.

Over 60 school staff members have been injured, including 40 principals, Mr. Geffray, the education minister, said on Friday.

In Nantes, demonstrators set fire to school; in Marseille, protesters pelted a fire truck; and in Belfort, a 17-year-old was arrested after students assaulted a police officer, prosecutors told BFMTV. More than 300 officers and gendarmes have been hurt in the protests, Mr. Nuñez said on social media.

France has a long history of youth protests that sometimes have turned violent, including student-led protests in 1968 that nearly toppled the government and helped transform French society.

How have the authorities responded?

The French government has strongly condemned the violence and responded forcefully. Gérald Darmanin, France's justice minister, said on Friday that he had directed prosecutors to pursue criminal charges where possible and to hold parents liable for damage.

But the government has also acknowledged some of the students' grievances.

On Thursday, in an apparent attempt to placate the rapidly spreading protests, Mr. Geffray, the education minister, said the government would scrap plans to increase some higher education registration fees that had been announced hours earlier as part of the 2027 budget.

And after meeting on Friday with student union representatives, Mr. Geffray announced plans to reform school democracy to better include students. He also said that his office would draw up plans to address teacher shortages.

Student leaders dismissed the proposals. Sabrine Kharbach, a member of the student union that has organized protests, called it a "smoke screen."

Students have called for demonstrations on Tuesday and urged political parties and trade unions to join them.

French officials have accused France Unbowed, the far-left party, of exploiting the students' anger for political gain. The party's candidate for president, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, is neck-and-neck in some polls with the leading centrist candidate in the elections, which will be held in about eight months.

France Unbowed has denied the allegations.

Bally Bagayoko, a party member who is mayor of St.-Denis, north of Paris, told The Times that the protests had erupted spontaneously because of what he called a "considerable shortfall in the resources allocated for our children's education."