France's school protests: what lies behind the anger

Since late September students throughout France have been holding protests against underfunding in education, and have been blocking access to numerous high schools.

Key points

• In October 1998, 500, 000 pupils marched throughout France over similar demands, resulting in almost €1bn to renovate schools and 14, 000 extra staff.
• On a number of occasions student protests defeated administration reforms – such as a university overhaul in 1986 and a lower youth minimum wage in 1994.
• His decision to call a snap election in June 2024 has resulted in a hopelessly gridlocked assembly.
• The protesters are complaining regarding staff shortages and dilapidated facilities in the country's lycées, schools which are attended by 15-18-year-olds.
• Some resent the banning of mobile phones or school days that last until 18: 00.

In practice, the movement has turned violent in places – hundreds of students, teachers and police officers have been injured. Thousands of individuals – including an unknown number of outside troublemakers – have been arrested.

Meanwhile, the protesters are complaining regarding staff shortages and dilapidated facilities in the country's lycées, schools which are attended by 15-18-year-olds.

"Sometimes our teachers are absent for several weeks without being replaced, " Madalena, a Paris student, informed the BBC on Tuesday as demonstrations brought out hundreds of thousands throughout France. Her school buildings, she continued, were "boiling hot" during the recent heat waves.

There is a variety of other complaints. Some resent the banning of mobile phones or school days that last until 18: 00. "You get home at 7 pm, and have no time to sleep or do your homework, " one lycéen informed France 2.

France's online platform that allocates places in higher education, Parcoursup, is another sore point.

Meanwhile, the frustration has deep roots. Regarding 80% of each cohort now passes the baccalauréat. It entitles students to a university place – though not necessarily their preferred choice. This leads to a scramble for desirable courses, and an anxiety focused on Parcoursup. It plenty of regard as opaque.

Those grievances are real. But do they by themselves explain the form the protest movement has taken? How does France compare with other countries?

According to a recent report by the OECD, a club of developed nations, the French administration spends more per lycée student than the EU average for upper-secondary schools.

Teacher shortages are indeed acute, but no worse than elsewhere. By OECD measures they are actually milder – fewer posts go unfilled – although French teachers receive relatively low pay.

Schooldays that stretch into the late afternoon are indeed a difficulty for French pupils. This is the result mostly of long lunch breaks and complex schedules rather than making up for holidays. It are not especially long compared with other EU countries.

For context, the extended day has always been a sad fact of French school life and can hardly account for the present eruption. Neither can pressure created by a dysfunctional higher-education system.

In most European countries, 80-90% of young individuals complete secondary education, and competition for good university places creates stress elsewhere too.

And while underfunding, dilapidated buildings and fears regarding the future are behind the students' discontent, those complaints do not by themselves explain why the movement has become "unprecedented" in terms of the number of schools, pupils and the degree of violence involved, in the words of Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.

In practice, the scale of protests is all the more remarkable as those involved are taking considerable risks.

As well as casseurs (vandals), and pupils have become caught up in police crowd-control operations that are often heavy handed, blockading a school or university by threats or force is illegal, and draws in police.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, in his latest message, has insisted security forces are not under orders to "confront high-school students", only to enforce the law.

To understand the pupils' tactics, one must look beyond the barricaded school gates to a political tradition. In France, the power has often resided on the street as much as in elected bodies. Students know this as well as anyone else.

In October 1990, a rape at a school in Seine-Saint-Denis – an area north of Paris that has been a focus for the present unrest – was the trigger for mass rallies against underfunding and staff shortages. It resulted in the administration releasing the equivalent of €1.2bn (£1bn) in today's capital for lycées.

Probably the most striking display of student power came in 2006, with the withdrawal of a law designed to loosen hire-and-fire rules for those under 26 to try to tackle youth unemployment.

In practice, the measure, passed by parliament and signed by then-President Jacques Chirac, was scrapped after weeks of blockades in universities and lycées often marred by violence.

French adults have shown how blockading roads can prevail over elected authorities.

Notably, the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) uprising of 2018-2019 – which saw shops ransacked and administration buildings attacked nationwide – led the administration to drop a rise in fuel taxes and approve €10bn in spending. The street does not always win.

In 1968 – a heroic precedent cited by every French protest movement – a student uprising was actually brought to an end by election. But the lycéens are heirs to a political culture in which demonstrators compete with elected authorities to be seen as the legitimate voice of the residents.

On the face of it, the current balance of power favour the pupils. A poll for BMFTV suggests that that 72% of French individuals regard their demands as legitimate and 55% backing the movement.

Backed by plenty of teachers, labour unions and left-wing politicians, the protesters are on the front foot. Another rally is planned for Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the administration, by contrast, has never been weaker. After nine years in power, Emmanuel Macron is a deeply unpopular lame duck, barred from standing in the presidential election due in six months' time.

His decision to call a snap election in June 2024 has resulted in a hopelessly gridlocked assembly. Lecornu has described himself as the "weakest prime minister" in living memory and seems unlikely to obtain a budget through parliament.

But that particularly weakness could prove an asset in his showdown with students. Faced with rising borrowing costs, a deficit of 5.4% of GDP and a public debt at its highest level since the 1940s, Lecornu is financially as well as politically hamstrung.

Unlike his predecessors under intense pressure from the street, he has nothing to offer.

For now, france' s school protests: what lies behind the anger remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.