Report from Greg Oxley in Paris
As the school students’ mobilisation continues to grow, the government has failed to take any steps to solve, or even mitigate, the serious issues that caused it. Its only response has been police violence. Beginning with a school protest in Créteil in the south-east of Paris, on September 18, the movement quickly spread to dozens of schools, first in the Paris suburbs, then to hundreds of others throughout France. They involve blockades and demonstrations in front of schools.
The Minister of Education, Édouard Geffray, tries to present the movement as one orchestrated behind the scenes by the left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, La France Insoumise (LFI), and others on the far left. In truth, however, it reflects the exasperation of young people in the face of the continuous deterioration of the school system.
The national education system lacks material resources, teachers and staff. According to a survey by the SNES, the main secondary teachers’ union, at the start of the 2026 school year, at least one teacher post was unfilled in 53% of public middle and high schools. School premises are often in poor condition and unsuited to modern requirements.
The recently introduced Parcoursup website, to manage university applications, also poses serious difficulties. This year, nearly one in five high school students wishing to enter university (18%) did not obtain any of their preferred options, compared to 12% in 2025 and 10% in 2024.
The high school students are asking for more resources for education, the recruitment of additional teachers, the systematic replacement of absentees and the reduction of class sizes. They are also demanding more auxiliary staff, as well as the renovation and improvement of dilapidated buildings. These demands are fully legitimate.
Malaise in schools not taken seriously
Rather than taking the malaise in schools seriously, the government is turning to police violence to intimidate young people and break the movement. At the Balzac secondary school in Tours, a 16-year-old student was hit directly in the eye by an ‘LBD’ rubber bullet shot by a member of the CRS, special riot police. On September 30, L’Humanité published, in an article by Mathilde Trichet, the testimony of one of his comrades:
“The CRS charged us from afar,” the article reported, “to try to push us back. We didn’t throw anything; we were just moving forward. There was a friend of mine, who was very calm and doing nothing wrong, he was on his phone, and a policeman shot a flashball straight at him, it wasn’t fired upwards, it was really a straight shot. He took it right in the eye and collapsed on the ground bleeding and holding his eye. We grouped on him to see if he was alright, but the police continued to shoot at us while we were around him.”
At the Paul-Éluard school in Saint-Denis, a student in police custody suffered a fractured skull. On September 29, in Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, in the Val-d’Oise, (in Northern France) a police officer fired a tear gas canister at point-blank range into the mouth of a high school student, breaking several teeth.
Extreme police violence
In a text published on the Mediapart website, a teacher at the same high school described “arrests” as follows: “We say ‘arrested’ but the word is very ethereal: violently thrown to the ground, grabbed by the neck, slapped, beaten, beaten by several people, insulted, humiliated, placed in police custody for a full 24 hours, all for cardboard placards, for running around, for a few flames in the bottom of a garbage can that no one knows who lit, three firecrackers and a shaken gate.”
This extreme police violence is part of a deliberate strategy by Macron and his government. It is no more accidental than that used against the “yellow vest” protests across France eight years ago, or the more recent demonstrations opposed to pensions reforms.
Macron has declared war on the youth and its legitimate demands. University students are now beginning to mobilise in solidarity with school students. The next step will be the day of action on October 6, for which several trade union organisations, including the CGT and Solidaires, called for mass participation alongside school students, university students, teachers and all national education staff.
We must oppose this repressive and violent government and fight for the material and financial resources essential to the national education system.
[Greg Oxley is the editor of the French Marxist website, La Riposte, which can be found here]
