PARIS: French teenagers on Tuesday set fire to rubbish bins and hurled projectiles at police as they continued to blockade some high schools, demanding better conditions at their establishments in protests that have angered the government.
High school students have staged protests outside their schools since last week over grievances including timetables, class sizes, a shortage of teachers and overheated classrooms in the wake of recent heatwaves.
The movement in the lycees, which cater to the final years of school in France, started in the Ile-de-France region around Paris, where blockades at around 10 schools were reported by education authorities on Tuesday. It has since spread to other cities nationwide.
Masked students gathered outside the Lycee Cesar Baggio in Lille, northern France, setting bins on fire, an AFP photographer reported.
Bus shelters and advertising billboards were vandalised, while bottles, paving stones and various objects were hurled at police, who responded by firing tear gas.
Teenagers piled up dozens of bins to prevent entry to the Lycee Gabriel Guist’hau in the western city of Nantes, while in Paris there was an uneasy standoff between 30 students and a contingent of police at the Arago school.
Similar actions were also reported in cities including Marseille in the south, Bordeaux in the west and Lyon in the southeast.
‘Children of the suburbs’
At the Lamartine school in Paris, around 80 students gathered outside, brandishing slogans including “more hours of lessons than sleep” and “8:00 am to 6:00 pm, are we pupils or under arrest?”
There were tense scenes at the Lycee Brequigny in the north-western city of Rennes — Brittany’s largest high school — where around 100 students hurled projectiles at the building, an AFP video journalist said.
The actions came as unions planned a day of nationwide demonstrations and strikes over the budget of Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, a close ally of President Emmanuel Macron.
Tens of thousands were expected to rally in Paris and other cities, with teachers and fire services striking nationwide, although public transport was not badly affected.
“The anger is immense. I warn the government — it must address the demands and revise the draft budget, which is dangerous for the country and is driving us straight into the wall of recession at 200 kilometres an hour,” the head of the hardline CGT union, Sophie Binet, told BFM TV.
A 17-year-old pupil at the Lamartine school, who asked not to be named, said they had been angered by a lack of resources, overheated classrooms and overly congested timetables.
“We are also there to support our teachers who have a crazy amount of work compared to what they earn,” she told AFP.
Lecornu on Monday said any escalation of demonstrations at high schools would be “irresponsible” and lashed out at the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI) party for encouraging the protests.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said 164 arrests took place on Monday and 180 schools were affected, adding: “We cannot tolerate excesses.”
In the low-income Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, the district’s LFI mayor, Bally Bagayoko, joined a protest by hundreds of students at the Lycee Paul-Eluard.
Leading students in a rendition of the Marseillaise, he described the protests as “completely legitimate” and complained that low-income areas received fewer resources than higher-income ones.
“We, the children of the suburbs, are abandoned and neglected,” said 16-year-old Victoire, a student at the school, denouncing conditions at the establishment as “unsanitary.”