French High School Students Rise Up

ACG

From September 17th, high school students and staff staged blockades throughout France. This was to protest deteriorating educational conditions. The tempo of these blockades and demonstrations increased on September 29th and 30th.

Lack of teachers, teaching assistants, special needs assistants, and nurses; poorly insulated and unrenovated facilities; and untenable class schedules… All high school students in France are suffering the consequences of insufficient funding for the national education system. This has sparked a nationwide mobilisation that is shaking the media and the government.

The national education budget has increased by 30% since 2017, so why is the situation in high schools deteriorating? For the start of the 2026 school year, approximately 4,000 teaching positions were eliminated in both public and private schools across France. Then there is Parcoursup (1) and its unfair selection system, which relies on “digital filters”. Then, in higher education, the freeze on housing benefits will prevent the most vulnerable from finding accommodation. Not to mention the “Welcome to France” decree imposed by the government before the summer, a blatantly anti-immigration project that aims to increase tuition fees for non-European international students. In short, for all high school students, stress is mounting regarding their future studies, all while enduring gruelling schedules and conditions that make optimal learning impossible.

A mass movement emerged. But on October 1st, the government sent in its riot cop attack dogs, and there was brutal repression, particularly in working class neighbourhoods. There were mass arrests of students, more than 5,000 in one week. Beatings, injuries, flashball shots, tear gas, mutilations—the number of injured is high.  This has not, so far, deterred the movement, with huge demonstrations across France on October 6th.


From the Union Communiste Libertaire website:

“Parcoursup is blocking lives.” With these words, a high school student summed up on Tuesday the reasons for the blockade of his school, a blockade that was part of the widespread student movement that has been mobilizing for a week to demand resources for education. Understaffed personnel, dilapidated buildings, overcrowded classrooms “We lack everything” cry the students exposed daily to the stress of constant selection.

In working class neighbourhoods, students are sent to programs they didn’t choose, programs whose curricula are sometimes very opaque. Year after year, educational policies are reduced to managing a workforce in training and increasingly restrictive regulations. Student mobilisations in these neighbourhoods can take on more violent forms and are less like traditional demonstrations. How can we be surprised when we know the social and racial violence they endure daily? And let’s not be mistaken: when students take revenge on their schools, they are symbolically rebelling against this entire system of oppression and selection. We therefore warn staff against the knee-jerk moral condemnation that would dismiss this movement out of hand.

All these young people, who refuse to let their gaze towards the future be fixed only on catastrophe, make us proud.

This generation is aware of the systematic dismantling of its schools, the budget cuts being made at its expense, and the hostility directed towards it. In recent years, it has mobilsed against police brutality, for climate justice, and so on. This high school student movement is therefore not an isolated phenomenon. Its expansion across France since the initial blockades in the Paris region, and its alignment with the public sector strike on September 29th, is not a coincidence but rather the result of conditions shared throughout the country.

There’s plenty of money: let’s take it all! 450 billion: that’s the public money from the French rearmament plan, a windfall for the arms industry to maintain French imperialism. 655 million: that’s the funding allocated to developing AI in the public sector, without any consultation with employees on the usefulness of this tool, but simply to create opportunities for speculation. 1,400 positions: that’s the planned creation for the police and gendarmerie to continue the repression of our legitimate protests. No one can call this a technical problem; it’s a political choice. It’s a class struggle .

The Macron regime is increasingly concerned about this uprising, remembering the days of May-June 1968. It notes the frequent attacks on high schools by angry students, inflicting millions of euros damage. It fears the increasing possibility of workers joining in the movement. This accounts for its increasingly brutal repression. The most recent horrific incident was on October 6th, when a 15 year old student had a hand blown off by a stun grenade.