France keeps about 400 high schools shut as the student blockades spread

About 400 French high schools were closed on Friday, and the disruption ran wider than the closures. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said 735 of France's 3,700 schools were affected in one way or another. Education Minister Edouard Geffray said 65 education staff had been injured, including 40 headteachers. He asked parents to keep their children away from the protests. Euronews reported on Saturday morning that around 400 high schools were expected to remain closed.

The arrest figures depend on who is counting, and over what span. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told TF1 that 1,747 people were arrested on Friday, and that the situation was sliding into riot and urban violence. Darmanin, speaking as justice minister, told RTL that police had arrested 2,000 people, most of them teenagers, since the protests began. The New York Times, citing the Interior Ministry, reported that on Thursday more than 1,000 schools saw protests and 220 were blockaded, with arrests over the wider week at 3,000, police injuries near 400, and injuries to school employees and students above 230. These are not one table. Friday's police count is Nuñez's 1,747. The running total since the first blockade is Darmanin's 2,000.

Darmanin said the week had gone from high-school demonstrations to a public-order disturbance, and that prosecutors had been asked to hold parents liable for damage caused by their children and to make them pay for repairs. The Interior Ministry said some people at blockades had fired mortar-style fireworks, burned public buildings and looted shops. Officials blamed France Unbowed for stirring the protests. Students who spoke to Reuters and the Times described classes of 35, missing chairs, short lunch hours, absent teachers and buildings left for years without the funding to fix them.

What the pupils said, and where

In Pantin, on the edge of Paris, 15-year-old Kesia told Reuters that classes hold 35 pupils, that there are not enough chairs, and that a one-hour lunch break is too short for everyone to get food. She ran as police used tear gas. BBC reported that police in Pantin charged protesters and made arrests after projectiles were thrown. At the Rosa Parks high school in Seine-Saint-Denis, 15-year-old Issam Makhloufi told the Times that classrooms are not ventilated and that windows barely open. Seine-Saint-Denis has been the centre of a movement that began in the Paris region last week and had reached Montpellier, Nantes, Marseille and Strasbourg by Friday. In Strasbourg, Reuters reported, police used tear gas. Several students in the Paris region told Reuters they stayed away on Friday because the violence had grown.

Unions have backed the pupils. SNEP-FSU, SNUEP-FSU and Solidaires called on members to support the protests, and other unions asked teachers to strike. Geffray's injury count, 65 staff and 40 headteachers, sits with the education ministry. The BBC separately reported at least 65 staff injured, which matches the ministry figure. A headteacher hurt at a blockade is a different problem from a teenager in Nuñez's Friday arrest list. The education ministry has to open the building. The interior ministry has to process 1,747 arrests from a single day.

Parents' bills, and a Monday that is not guaranteed

Darmanin's request that prosecutors bill parents is a political line with a legal hook. French civil law already allows some claims against the parents of minors. Saying it while tear gas was still in use in Pantin ties the cost of broken windows to the family, not to the school budget the students say is the cause. Geffray, by urging parents to keep children home, asks the same families to end the blockade without putting a number on substitute teachers or class size.

Saturday's operable facts are the closure rate, the share of schools touched, and the injury split. Four hundred high schools shut is about a tenth of the stock on the earlier closure count. Darmanin's 735 of 3,700 is a wider net, one school in five affected even if the doors opened. Sixty-five education staff hurt, 40 of them headteachers, is the education ministry's count. Friday's arrests are 1,747, on the interior minister's television figure. The students' complaint, 35 to a room and a missing teacher, is unchanged by either number. Whether Monday's reopenings hold depends on whether the blockades in Seine-Saint-Denis and the cities that followed them are still at the gates when the first bell rings.