French school protests widen as teachers join Tuesday strike

Protests over poor school conditions widened across France on Tuesday, with 316 lycées affected by the movement and teachers joining a national public-sector strike day, according to Libération and Stern. The escalation followed a Monday of violent unrest at schools that left at least 164 people arrested and dozens injured, interior minister Laurent Núñez said.

Around 180 schools were affected on Monday, most of them in the Créteil and Versailles school districts near Paris, but also in Lille, Lyon, Grenoble and Nice, Núñez said. He gave a preliminary tally of 12 injured security officers and, citing the education minister, said eight school staff, including three head teachers, and about a dozen pupils were also hurt.

"These were not demands, it was really, often, violence in its purest form," Núñez said, describing masked individuals armed with projectiles who sought to confront security forces. Police have opened an investigation into suspected violence by officers during the unrest, he said, without giving further detail. Education minister Édouard Geffray told France Inter that democratic institutions could not be bypassed through violence and blamed the unrest on people unconnected to the schools.

Students at French lycées have been protesting for about a week against overcrowded classrooms, staff shortages and heavy timetables, according to media reports cited by Tagesspiegel. In Lille, students pointed to a lack of resources and staff, an overpriced canteen, classrooms too hot in summer and too cold in winter, and bedbugs and broken showers in student accommodation, Observador reported.

The main student union, the Union Syndicale Lycéenne, called for lycées across France to be blockaded on Tuesday to coincide with the public-sector strike day. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu accused the left-wing France Insoumise party of an "irresponsible escalation" by urging the blockades to continue, while France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon accused the government of having "ordered repression". The CGT union said students' demands were about their living and study conditions rather than party politics.