France keeps about 400 high schools shut as student blockades spread

About 400 French high schools stayed closed on Friday after student protests over teacher shortages and building conditions turned into clashes with police. Education Minister Edouard Geffray said the closures covered roughly one school in ten. He urged parents to keep their children away from the demonstrations. Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said police had arrested 2,000 people since the protests began, most of them teenagers, and that parents of those who damage property should pay for the repairs.

The protests started in the Paris region last week and have spread. On Thursday the Interior Ministry counted protests at more than 1,000 schools, with 220 blockaded. The New York Times, reporting from Seine-Saint-Denis, put the wider toll at 3,000 arrests, nearly 400 injured police officers, and more than 230 injured school employees and students. Geffray's own figure for education staff is lower and more specific: 65 injured, including 40 headteachers. The two counts are not the same population. One is a ministry tally of staff. The other is a newspaper tally that includes police and students.

Students blocking the gates are asking for substitute teachers, more money, and buildings that can be used. In Pantin, a 15-year-old named Kesia told Reuters the classes hold 35, there are not enough chairs, and the one-hour lunch break is too short for everyone to get food. She spoke before police used tear gas. At the Rosa Parks school in Seine-Saint-Denis, 15-year-old Issam Makhloufi told the New York Times that classrooms are not ventilated and windows barely open. A national test for pupils entering middle school recorded worse results in that department than elsewhere, high teacher absenteeism, and a warning that too many teachers there are young and inexperienced.

Unions have called on teachers to strike. Riot police used tear gas in the Paris suburbs and in cities including Toulouse, where a protester threw a bin onto a fire outside the Lycee Deodat-de-Severac. Marseille, Rennes and Aubervilliers have also seen clashes. The government has described parts of the unrest as urban violence. Several students in the Paris region told Reuters they were staying home on Friday because of that violence, which splits the protest between those still at the gates and those who have left.

Darmanin's line on reparations is a legal threat aimed at parents, not at the ministry budget the students are complaining about. French law can already hold parents responsible for damage caused by a minor in some cases. Saying it on RTL radio, with 2,000 arrests already logged, is a signal that the interior ministry wants the cost of broken gates and burnt bins sent back to families. It does not hire a substitute teacher for a class of 35.

The one-in-ten closure figure is the cleanest measure of how far the protest has reached into the school week. Four hundred high schools shut means a large share of lycee students had no classes on Friday, whether or not they joined a blockade. Geffray's request that parents keep children away treats the protest as a safety problem. The students' list treats it as a staffing and buildings problem. Both can be true on the same morning in Pantin: tear gas in the street, and not enough chairs in the room the students were refusing to enter.

President Emmanuel Macron's government has not published a package that matches the demands. No figure has been given for extra substitute teachers, and no timetable for repairs in Seine-Saint-Denis. Until one appears, the protest has a simple weekly test. If the 400 closures shrink next week, the interior ministry's arrests will look like they worked. If the number holds, the argument returns to class size, absent teachers, and windows that do not open. The students have already shown they can shut a tenth of the high schools. The ministry has shown it can arrest them.