About 400 schools in France will not open on Friday after what started as pupils protesting over education-related grievances escalated into violence.
The movement had reached a tipping point and morphed from school blockades into urban violence, according to a readout of a crisis meeting provided by a source close to Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu.
The protests against teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings erupted in the Paris region last month but have turned increasingly violent as they spread nationwide, with dozens injured and police making hundreds of arrests.
Young protesters started fires in at least two high schools on Thursday, while teachers were inadvertently splashed with petrol at a third in the southern city of Marseille, officials said. At least one car was torched in Strasbourg in the east and riot police clashed with youths in Toulouse in the south-west.
“There are a little over 400 schools and other educational establishments that I know of that will be closed,” French Education Minister Edouard Geffray said in an interview with broadcaster France 2 late on Thursday.
Hard-left politicians and local mayors have been accused by political opponents of fanning the protest movement by turning up in front of high schools and defending it.
According to the source close to Mr Lecornu, intelligence agencies told a crisis meeting on Thursday that the protest movement had been initiated by politicians from the hard left, including members of La France Insoumise (LFI).
LFI politician Louis Boyard denied the claim in comments to French broadcasters. “LFI has always advocated non-violent demonstrations,” he said.
“The government, by turning it into a political battle, has added fuel to the fire by insulting and repressing high school students. This sense of frustration will not be dealt with through batons, it will be dealt with by showing consideration for these young people.”
Unrest
Some of the worst unrest on Thursday was in Marseille. At the city's Victor Hugo high school, two teachers were inadvertently splashed as a pupil attempted to throw petrol into a rubbish bin. Earlier, the prosecutor's office had said the teachers had been assaulted and “doused in petrol”.
Outside Marseille's Saint-Exupery high school, hundreds of young people forced firefighters to flee their lorry and then set it alight. Public transport in the city, France's second largest, was suspended after staff members were injured in the unrest.
A school was set ablaze in the western city of Nantes, fire crews said, and the facade of another suffered fire damage in Le Havre in the north.
In the Parisian suburb of Saint-Denis, crowds of young people gathered in front of a line of police. One pupil held up a sign that read: “Can we explain ourselves without being tear-gassed?”
Mr Geffray said he would meet representatives of staff unions, parent groups and student associations on Friday.
Arrests
The demonstrations and blockades, which began last week, have become a political flashpoint at a sensitive moment for the government, which announced a series of deeply unpopular spending cuts in its 2027 budget on Thursday.
The demonstrations have left dozens of people injured. Hundreds have been arrested, most of them teenagers, officials have said.
Pupils have accused the police of using heavy-handed tactics, including the use of tear gas and flash-ball guns. The government has criticised the violence that has broken out during some of the protests, but says difficulties in high schools should be acknowledged and addressed.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said in some places troublemakers were moving from school to school to incite violence.
Mr Geffray called for schools to hold classes remotely if protesters were blocking their premises. “Violence will not keep our students from their fundamental right to an education,” he said in a post on X.
