France suspends stun grenades as 18 investigations into possible police brutality open
Tens of thousands of students have joined hundreds of thousands of parents, grandparents and teachers in marches in cities across France this week in a youth-led protest movement over the state of the country’s high schools, with further strikes planned. The movement began on 17 September, when pupils at the Lycée Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, southwest of Paris, returned from summer holidays to find they could not continue their studies because of the extent of staff absences, and the 15- to 18-year-olds blockaded their high school. After negotiations with the education ministry, the staffing gaps were filled, but complaints about crumbling buildings, overcrowded classrooms, and long school days — alongside a wider sense of inequality — resonated through the suburbs. One placard held aloft by a student in Paris read: “School is a right, not a privilege.”
The Guardian has described the protests as the most significant youth movement to emerge across France in recent decades. Angelique Chrisafis, the Guardian’s Paris correspondent, who has reported from the centre of the demonstrations, said: “This movement grew from the ground up, from teenagers speaking to others outside their lycées.” Over a couple of weeks, she said, it spread to hundreds of schools across France. She called it very much a youth movement, comparing it to the 2006 protests over an unpopular youth employment contract, which were organized by students’ unions. “High schoolers are organising themselves without a centralised system or even spokesperson. That’s historic, and it’s taken the government by surprise.”
The pupils’ grievances are backed by evidence, and the prime minister has described them as “legitimate.” Thousands of French schools at all levels are in need of repair. Class sizes are bigger on average, and school days are longer, than in other comparable countries, and about 10% of teaching hours across the year are not delivered because of absent teachers. France’s expenditure on high schools is 28% higher than the OECD average — a gap Chrisafis said reflects the country’s larger stock of school buildings and costlier vocational courses, while teacher shortages are linked to very low pay progression and severe difficulties in finding teachers to work in deprived areas. There is also a shortfall in school nurses and support staff for pupils with disabilities.
The sociologist Fabien Truong, who has written widely on youth protest culture, praised the “maturity and coherence” of the protesters and pointed to a “social media effect” in which teenagers in wealthier areas shared videos of rats, gaping ceilings, and leaking toilets in poorer schools. “It’s beautiful, this solidarity with students from more privileged backgrounds fighting for others and more equality.” Some of France’s most elite state schools have also been barricaded. Chrisafis spoke to one teacher outside a school in a richer inner-city area, who was proud of her pupils. The teacher said there was a feeling of solidarity and generosity between teenagers, and how it flies in the face of the idea that they are part of a social media generation who are selfish and narcissistic. Teenage girls at a barricade in central Paris told Chrisafis: “We’re told in France that state education is a great leveller, but that’s not the case. We are being taught our lessons, but we’re getting out on to the street because we can’t bear to know that other students in poorer areas are in buildings that are crumbling.”
The government initially “had its head in the sand,” distracted by public anger at rising fuel costs and a difficult budget process, Chrisafis said. “And when it suddenly woke up, the reaction was not a political one, it was a police crackdown.” Anger at the police response has been visible on the streets — one placard read: “A state that gasses high school students is a weak state.” Eighteen investigations into possible police brutality are under way after injuries allegedly involving the use of police weapons, including a 15-year-old who lost his hand after contact with a stun grenade and a 14-year-old whose jaw was shattered after police allegedly beat him and fired a form of rubber-bullet launcher. The interior minister has suspended the use of stun grenades but rejected accusations of police brutality, saying riot officers only intervened when protesters turned violent.
Dozens of teachers have been injured in clashes, and a small number of schools have been burned or ransacked, though Chrisafis said most protests have been peaceful. The injuries have prompted outrage, with parents and teachers angry at what they call a “disproportionate police response” joining young people at the barricades. An Elabe poll for BFMTV published on Wednesday found that 72% of French people considered the students’ demands legitimate, while 55% of those surveyed said the protests should come to an end.
The movement has brought to the fore a debate about the wider state of public services ahead of next year’s presidential election. The Guardian describes Jean-Luc Mélenchon as the “radical left leader” and notes he is backed for president by 47% of voters under 35, and reports that he is loudly supporting the protesters, while the paper calls Marine Le Pen the “far-right candidate” and reports she has blamed the current government for chaos and called for an anti-riot law. The scale of the marches was unexpected, Chrisafis said: “There were hundreds of thousands of parents, grandparents and teachers. There is a lot of support for these young people’s demands and an understanding that the problems they are raising reflect wider worries about public services.”
The French movement echoes youth discontent elsewhere in Europe. Tens of thousands of young people have taken to Spanish streets in recent weeks to protest the country’s deepening housing crisis, and a crowd of jobless young people protested outside the Labour conference in Liverpool last week over what they saw as their bleak employment prospects.