France keeps about 400 schools shut after more than 2,000 arrests in student protests

About 400 French high schools stayed closed on Friday after student protests over missing teachers and crumbling buildings turned into street clashes, fires and more than 2,000 arrests.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray told France 2 late on Thursday that a little over 400 schools and other establishments would not open. Reuters put that at roughly one in ten high schools. The interior ministry said 1,949 people were arrested on Thursday and 305 police officers were injured. Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin later put the arrest total since the protests began at 2,000, most of them teenagers, and said parents should pay for damage. He also said the protests had been taken over by people from outside the schools.

The blockades began in the Paris region last month and spread. By Thursday the interior ministry counted 1,027 lycees touched by demonstrations and blockades at 222 of them. At least 30 universities were also reported blockaded, including campuses in Rennes and Paris. Students want substitute teachers hired, more staff, and buildings that are not falling apart. A student named Raphael, speaking to AFP, said some rooms leaked, the cafeteria was too small, and there were not enough toilets or supervisors.

Thursday was the violent day. Students started fires at at least two high schools. Teachers at a third, in Marseille, were splashed with petrol. A car was torched in Strasbourg. Riot police clashed with youths in Toulouse. Blazes were reported at two high schools in Nantes and at the entrance of a school in Rouen. A headteacher at Degrugillier high school in Auchel was hit in the ear by a firework. On Friday the clashes continued. Police used tear gas in Strasbourg and in the Paris suburb of Pantin. Fireworks were aimed at police lines in Marseille. Rubbish bins were set alight in Rennes. In Toulouse a protester threw a bin into a fire outside Lycee Deodat-de-Severac. In Paris, students carried placards reading "We have a future to build, not to endure."

The political argument is already about who started it. Intelligence agencies told a crisis meeting that the movement was initiated by politicians from La France Insoumise. LFI lawmaker Louis Boyard denied that on French television. Geffray urged parents to keep their children out of the streets. "In the streets, the children are in danger," he said. Several students in the Paris region stayed home on Friday because of the violence. The interior ministry opened three investigations into police violence. Amnesty International warned against excessive force.

The budget number underneath the protests is small and specific. The draft 2027 budget, presented as the protests spread, raises education spending by 1.7 percent to 65.53 billion euros, below inflation, and that figure excludes teacher pensions. A 1.7 percent nominal rise does not hire the substitute teachers the students are naming. It also does not repair a leaking classroom. That is the gap between the ministry's line that resources are rising and the students' line that the rooms they sit in are not.

The arrest figure needs the same plain reading. Two thousand arrests in a protest of teenagers is a large number against a school system, and Darmanin has already assigned the bill to parents. Most of those arrested are not adults. A reparations demand aimed at parents changes the cost of a blockade from a school disciplinary matter into a household one. Whether courts will actually send those bills is not settled. The minister has said they should.

The geography shows the spread. Nantes and Rouen in the west and north, Marseille in the south, Strasbourg in the east, Toulouse in the southwest, Rennes in Brittany, Pantin on the edge of Paris. High school students in Liege, across the Belgian border, began their own protest on Thursday, and high schools there were closed on Friday. The French action has a neighbour, even if the budget they are angry about is France's.

Public transport in Marseille and Strasbourg was halted on Thursday, officials said, because of vandalism and to keep protesters from moving. That is a second cost, paid by people who were not in the schoolyards. A closed metro is not a closed lycee, but it is how a school protest reaches a city that is not in class.

Geffray's 400 closures are the state's immediate answer: shut the building rather than staff it. The students' demand is the opposite, more adults in the building. Friday did not resolve that. It put a number on the closure, a number on the arrests, and a 1.7 percent figure on the budget line they say is too small.