Fires, fury and hundreds of arrests as France gripped by student protests

As dozens of school pupils sat on top of a pile of wheelie bins blocking a high school entrance in north-eastern Paris, Sophia, 17, was on the frontline of the barricade, when she would normally have been attending Spanish class.“We hope this grows into a massive youth protest movement,” said the final year baccalaureate student at Paris’s Lycée Voltaire, who did not want her real name published. She was on her second day of blocking the school entrance along with hundreds of others, ensuring all lessons were cancelled. “We just want to be listened to by the government. We’d rather stand here doing this than have to learn in poor conditions. It’s the only way to make ourselves heard.”“School is a right, not a privilege,” read a cardboard sign as Sophia listed the grievances of teenagers across France: a lack of state investment in education, overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings, poor teacher pay, staff absences and an unequal system in which social background determined success. Other reasons for the protest included the opaque and difficult online system for university applications as well as the unbearable temperatures in classrooms during the heatwaves in May and June.Students proetsting in Lyon on Friday. Photograph: Laurent Cipriani/AP“The education budget is being cut to shreds while so much extra funding is being put into the army,” said Sophia, who wanted to go on to study art and work in animation. She said she hoped the demonstrations and blockades would continue into next week. Several teachers stood by the barricades in support.The French government is struggling to deal with its worst crisis in months after it was taken by surprise by the thousands of teenagers demonstrating outside schools across the country this week. Students’ unions say the education system is underfunded and neglected. Hundreds of high schools were closed or barricaded on Friday, and hundreds of young people have been arrested as the movement threatens to roll on into next week.Many school students protesting have accused the state of disengaging from secondary education, describing difficult conditions in classrooms with ceilings partially collapsing during class, leaks, cockroaches and buildings in disrepair. Others have spoken of excessively long school days and a lack of teaching staff.The government said the grievances were legitimate but condemned what it called “urban violence”. Students have accused police of using excessive force and causing injuries by regularly firing teargas canisters to disperse the protests. In Paris on Friday morning, fire damaged the entrances of two high schools – Léonard de Vinci in the south of the city and Gaston-Bachelard in the south-east.Students kick back teargas canisters in Strasbourg. Photograph: Romeo Boetzle/AFP/Getty ImagesSeveral students have been injured in the protests, while the education ministry said 65 education staff were injured, including 40 school principals. An investigation is under way after a 14-year-old boy in Val d’Oise suffered serious injuries to his mouth and jaw after police allegedly beat him and fired a form of rubber-bullet launcher. The family’s lawyer said the boy had thought he was “going to die”.Outside Lycée Voltaire, riot police stood guard on Friday amid the quiet demonstration by hundreds of children. “We’re totally pacifist,” said Yves, a 17-year-old final year pupil who did not want his name published. He would normally have been in history class but said he had the full support of his parents to be on the barricade. He wanted to study catering next year.High school students face off with riot police in Montpellier. Photograph: Horcajuelo Guillaume/EPA“The atmosphere on this barricade is generally very calm,” he said. “But there have been other people from outside school who have come past and tried to set fire to things, so we’ve tried to move the bins to stop that.”On Friday morning, loud bangs rang out as some people further away from the school, let off firework mortars. Yves said: “Yesterday I heard bangs going off every two minutes, it’s loud and scary when things are being fired horizontally and not up into the air. There were people provoking running battles with police but it wasn’t pupils from our school.”Camille, 18, who said she wanted to become a teacher, said pupils were also protesting over the French government’s lack of engagement over poor results in international education rankings. “France has disastrous results and yet we’re one of the countries with the longest school days,” she said. “The government refuses to see that it’s about quality, not the number of teaching hours.”Bins burning, with graffiti on one reading ‘fuck RN’, in Paris. Photograph: Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty ImagesFarther east, on the barricade outside the Lycée Hélène Boucher, students were singing and holding cardboard signs of support for people in Gaza, as well as banners against the far-right presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, who is riding high in the polls.Sofiane, 19, who was studying literature, said students feared the government would scrap its special €1 meals for struggling students and reduce welfare aid for housing. “We’re also protesting about the conditions in the heatwave,” he said. “It was unbearable sitting exams in 35C-40C heat, even the teachers said those were impossible conditions.”He said the demonstrations were likely to continue. “Young people just want to study and learn in decent conditions. The French state seems surprised about worsening school results, but they’re do nothing to remedy that.”