School protests spread as fires, blockades deepen unrest in France

Police have detained hundreds as students protest overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and crumbling facilities.French students have set fire to bins and erected blockades outside schools in several cities, protesting overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and crumbling facilities.Several school principals were injured, harassed or assaulted during blockades at high schools on Thursday, according to reports from regional education authorities, prefectures and union representatives.Recommended Stories list of 2 itemslist 1 of 2Public workers in France strike over pay as student protests turn violentlist 2 of 2What’s behind French student protests that turned violent?end of listPolice have already detained hundreds of protesters at the lycees, which students aged 15 to 18 attend for their final three years of secondary education in France.At Marseille’s Victor Hugo high school, the teachers were inadvertently splashed as a student attempted to throw petrol into a rubbish bin, local authorities said. Earlier, the prosecutor’s office had ⁠said the teachers had been assaulted and “doused in petrol”.At another school in the city, Saint-Exupery high school, hundreds of young people surrounded a firetruck that had arrived to put out a blaze in the morning, police said. The attackers forced the firefighters to flee the vehicle, then set it alight.In Nantes, firefighters extinguished a fire at a high school entrance following what regional education officials called a gathering “marked by violence towards staff”. In Strasbourg, trams were halted to “restrict the movements of rioters and demonstrators”, and students burned barriers on tram tracks, authorities said.“There are 35 of us per classroom. With 35 degrees Celsius [95 degrees Fahrenheit] in summer, it’s unbearable. There aren’t enough toilets, and there are water leaks in some rooms,” Raphael, a 17-year-old who withheld his surname for fear of reprisals, told the AFP news agency outside a protest in Strasbourg.