Dozens hurt as French school protests over funding turn violent

Protests by French high-school students over teacher shortages and poor building conditions have spread to hundreds of schools this week, injuring dozens of people and leading to hundreds of arrests, officials said. Education minister Édouard Geffray said 76 people, including students and staff, had been injured since the protests began.

Blockades and attempted blockades began at schools nationwide, with disruption reported at 416 of France's roughly 2,400 state-run high schools by Wednesday, RMF24 reported. The unrest has been most intense in Saint-Denis, a suburb north of Paris, and in the Lyon area, where students have set fire to bins and clashed with police.

Interior minister Laurent Núñez said around 440 people were detained on Tuesday alone because of the protests, most of them minors, and that police recorded seven incidents in which hydrochloric acid was thrown at officers.

The protests, which began last week, coincided with a broader public-sector strike on Tuesday and have become a political flashpoint days before the government presents its 2027 budget, which is expected to include spending cuts. Students say chronic underfunding has left schools without enough teachers or equipment and with overcrowded classrooms. OECD figures cited in the reports put French education spending around the middle of member countries, with the share of the overall budget spent on schools slightly reduced even as total spending rose between 2015 and 2022.

Politicians from the hard-left France Unbowed party have joined the protests; other officials have accused the party of stoking student anger with its rhetoric. One France Unbowed mayor, quoted as saying that violence can sometimes be legitimate, said afterwards his remarks had been taken out of context. President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters in Madrid, said high schools should be open and serve the transmission of knowledge, and were not places for blockades or for burning bins.

Protests have also spread to Rennes, Nice, Strasbourg, Grenoble and Marseille, student organisations said, and have vowed further action in the coming days.