Lecornu calls Tuesday's school marches the heaviest toll on French education in decades

Police fired tear gas and water cannon in Paris, Strasbourg, Rennes and Toulouse on Tuesday as France held the largest day so far of a school protest that began in a Paris suburb on 21 September. The interior ministry counted 256,000 people in dozens of cities, 56,000 of them in Paris. The Union Syndicale Lycéenne, one of the high-school unions that called the day, said 450,000 took part. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu told lawmakers the clashes had already injured 215 teenagers and 85 school staff, "the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system".

The interior ministry said 488 people were arrested and 48 security personnel were injured. Paris police said the capital's clashes came from about 300 people, most of them hooded or masked, facing security forces, and that the rest of the Paris march passed without a major incident. Several shopfronts were damaged. Education Minister Edouard Geffray's ministry said classes were wholly or partly suspended at 891 schools. The student union said more than half of France's roughly 3,700 lycées were blockaded or closed, and some local authorities moved lessons online.

The first march, at the Saint-Exupéry lycée in a Paris suburb, drew little notice on 21 September. In the weeks since, CNN reported, more than 6,000 people have been taken into custody, most of them minors with no previous record. A student in Lens, in the north-east, lost a hand after picking up a grenade. A student in Tours lost the use of an eye. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the police response had been proportionate in "almost all cases" and that some marches had turned into riots. Lecornu rejected the claim that the government had ordered a crackdown.

The demands are concrete and local. Pupils and parents have complained about absent teachers who are not replaced, classrooms that leak, buildings with rats, and a school day that runs from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Hugo Vetzel, a recent graduate who joined the Strasbourg march, told Reuters there was "such a gap between the elites and us". Lecornu ordered ministers to answer the list: cover for absent teachers, a review of the length of the day, longer lunch breaks, and repairs to old buildings. He wants the first proposals by the end of October. Geffray met student leaders on Friday. No agreement came out of that meeting, and the unions called Tuesday's turnout immediately afterwards.

The political calendar sits behind the marches. President Emmanuel Macron's allies lost their parliamentary majority in 2024. The government has struggled to pass a budget while it tries to narrow the deficit, and French 10-year bond yields have moved above 5 percent. Education spending has lagged inflation. France's 2025 PISA results left pupils behind OECD peers on the measures the government itself cites. A presidential election is due in the spring, and both the far right and the far left have gained from the same anger over public services. Macron called an emergency meeting with Lecornu and ministers as Tuesday's marches were still moving.

The gap between the two crowd counts will not be settled quickly. The ministry's 256,000 and the union's 450,000 differ by almost 200,000 people, which is the size of a large city. What both sides agree on is the injury list Lecornu read out: 215 teenagers and 85 staff. That figure, not the crowd estimate, is what he has now tied to a deadline. If the end-of-October proposals do not include a number for replacement teachers and a repair budget for the lycées that closed on Tuesday, the unions have already shown they can put a quarter of a million people on the street in a single day.