French lycée blockades thin out as Geffray offers a teacher-cover plan

French teenagers blockaded some lycées and marched in cities on Thursday, the third week of a protest about missing teachers and worn school buildings. The education ministry said 224 schools were closed in the morning and 157 by lunchtime, which left 96 percent open. The marches ran from Lille in the north to Rennes and Nantes in the west and to Toulon and Marseille in the south. They were largely peaceful. Police and protesters scuffled in Paris and Nantes. In Rennes police charged a crowd and used a water cannon.

Education Minister Edouard Geffray met students and teachers in Reims and said he was launching an emergency plan to replace absent teachers. Heavy timetables are also under review. He did not publish a headcount, a budget line or a date by which a missing teacher will be covered. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu had said late on Wednesday that the government would present concrete, quick and fully funded answers by late October. He did not list them. Student leaders said that was not enough and called another set of marches for next Tuesday.

What the pupils are counting

The complaint is specific to the lycée, the school for 15- to 18-year-olds. Pupils and some teachers have blocked gates since late September over staff shortages and buildings they describe as dilapidated. About 80 percent of each age group now passes the baccalauréat, which opens a university place without guaranteeing the course a student wants. The allocation runs through Parcoursup, the national assignment system, which many families treat as opaque. The BBC noted that the scramble for desirable courses sits under the anger about hours and rooms.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has called the movement unprecedented in the number of schools, the number of pupils and the degree of violence. Hundreds of students, teachers and officers have been injured since late September. Thousands of people have been arrested, including an unknown number of people who were not pupils. Lecornu has said security forces are not under orders to confront high-school students, only to enforce the law. Thursday's water cannon in Rennes is the picture that sentence has to sit beside.

A poll that points both ways

A poll cited by Reuters found 72 percent support for the students and 55 percent wanting the protests to stop. That split is the political problem for both sides. A government that treats the marches as a policing matter is arguing with a public that mostly accepts the grievance. A student leadership that calls another Tuesday march is arguing with a public that mostly wants the gates open. The ministry's own count, 224 down to 157, is the government's evidence that the blockade is thinning. The call for Tuesday is the students' evidence that thinning is not the same as ending.

Geffray's emergency plan is the first named response that is not a promise of a later document. Covering absent teachers is the demand that can be checked. A school can count uncovered hours next week and compare them with this week. Timetable review is slower and harder to falsify. Lecornu's late-October package is still a date without a list. Until that list exists, the operational offer on the table is the Reims announcement: replacements for missing teachers, and a look at the weight of the week.

Why the bac is in the argument

The building and the missing teacher are local. The pass rate is national. When four in five pupils clear the bac, the exam stops sorting the cohort and the sorting moves to Parcoursup. A pupil who has already been told the assignment system is a lottery has a reason to treat a closed gate as a way to be heard. That does not make a blockade a curriculum policy. It does explain why a protest about plaster and substitute teachers has held a third week, and why a minister's answer has to include both a cover teacher and a word on the week that follows the bac.

Tuesday is the next count. If the morning closure number rises from 224, the thinning of Thursday was a pause. If it falls again, Geffray can argue the emergency plan is being given time. The funded answers Lecornu promised are still due by the end of the month, and they are still unspecified.