Fires, fury and hundreds of arrests as France gripped by student protests

As dozens of school pupils sat on top of a pile of wheelie bins blocking a high school entrance in north-eastern Paris, Sophia, 17, was on the frontline of the barricade, when she would normally have been attending Spanish class.

“We hope this grows into a massive youth protest movement,” said the final year baccalaureate student at Paris’s Lycée Voltaire, who did not want her real name published. She was on her second day of blocking the school entrance along with hundreds of others, ensuring all lessons were cancelled. “We just want to be listened to by the government. We’d rather stand here doing this than have to learn in poor conditions. It’s the only way to make ourselves heard.”

“School is a right, not a privilege,” read a cardboard sign as Sophia listed the grievances of teenagers across France: a lack of state investment in education, overcrowded classes of up to 40 children in crumbling buildings, poor teacher pay, staff absences and an unequal system in which social background determined success. Other reasons for the protest included the opaque and difficult online system for university applications as well as the unbearable temperatures in classrooms during the heatwaves in May and June.

“The education budget is being cut to shreds while so much extra funding is being put into the army,” said Sophia, who wanted to go on to study art and work in animation. She said she hoped the demonstrations and blockades would continue into next week. Several teachers stood by the barricades in support.

The French government is struggling to deal with its worst crisis in months after it was taken by surprise by the thousands of teenagers demonstrating outside schools across the country this week. Students’ unions say the education system is underfunded and neglected. Hundreds of high schools were closed or barricaded on Friday, and hundreds of young people have been arrested as the movement threatens to roll on into next week.

Many school students protesting have accused the state of disengaging from secondary education, describing difficult conditions in classrooms with ceilings partially collapsing during class, leaks, cockroaches and buildings in disrepair. Others have spoken of excessively long school days and a lack of teaching staff.

The government said the grievances were legitimate but condemned what it called “urban violence”. Students have accused police of using excessive force and causing injuries by regularly firing teargas canisters to disperse the protests. In Paris on Friday morning, fire damaged the entrances of two high schools – Léonard de Vinci in the south of the city and Gaston-Bachelard in the south-east.

Several students have been injured in the protests, while the education ministry said 65 education staff were injured, including 40 school principals. An investigation is under way after a 14-year-old boy in Val d’Oise suffered serious injuries to his mouth and jaw after police allegedly beat him and fired a form of rubber-bullet launcher. The family’s lawyer said the boy had thought he was “going to die”.