PARIS: Police fired tear gas at protesters outside French high schools on Tuesday as more than 250,000 students, teachers and parents took to the streets across France in the biggest day of demonstrations in a protest movement that Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu has described as the most violent school unrest in decades.
The protests, in which a teenager lost a hand on Monday, were the latest manifestation of public anger ahead of a presidential election in the spring.
The government is under pressure to tame public debt amid weak growth, and has struggled with basic tasks such as passing a budget since President Emmanuel Macron’s allies lost their majority in a 2024 parliamentary vote.
Lecornu told lawmakers at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had so far been injured in clashes, “the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system”. His office said more than 700 police officers were also hurt.
Thousands of students took to the streets across France Tuesday in the largest day of demonstrations since protests began two weeks ago in the suburbs of Paris and spread nationwide.
Students are demanding better conditions in schools, including replacements for absent teachers, shorter school days and longer lunch breaks. The government has deployed riot police amid some unrest.
— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 6, 2026
Macron has convened Lecornu and other senior ministers at an emergency meeting on Tuesday, broadcaster BFM reported.
In Marseille and Nantes, protesters held up signs reading “The state has killed national education”. In Toulouse, parents linked arms at the front of a march through the city.
In Strasbourg, Lyon, Rennes and Paris, the demonstrations at times turned violent, with police firing tear gas and protesters lighting fires in the streets and hurling projectiles.
The Paris police said the clashes there had come about when some 300 people attempted to face off against security forces, adding that the protest was generally unfolding well elsewhere.
By late afternoon, they said they were still clashing with a small contingent of people. Three storefronts had been damaged.
The protests began in September in the deprived suburbs of Paris, before spreading nationwide.
“There is such a gap between the elites and us,” said Hugo Vetzel, a recent high-school graduate in Strasbourg.
The High School Students Union said more than half of France’s high schools were blockaded or would close for the day. Some local education authorities have tried to move classes online.
Students complain about schools facing basic maintenance problems, from water leaks to rat infestations.
Thousands of arrests
Rights groups, students and parent groups have accused authorities of using disproportionate force against minors. The government says the protest movement has been hijacked by outsiders and in some places deteriorated into urban violence.
France’s interior ministry said 6,100 people have been arrested since the protests began, the overwhelming majority of them minors. More than 1,800 people are being prosecuted for unspecified crimes, including 1,483 minors, the justice ministry said.
A teenager’s hand was blown off as high-school protesters clashed with riot police in northern France on Monday. The regional newspaper, La Voix du Nord, said the 15-year-old lost his hand and part of his lower arm after picking up a police grenade intended to be non-lethal.
“They want to divide the young people into good and bad protesters,” said Omar Slaouti, a high-school teacher in Argenteuil, a northwestern suburb of Paris. “If there were no trash cans on fire, the government would not have stepped back and become aware of the issues at stake.”
Six months before an election to replace Macron, his government and far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party have accused France Unbowed (LFI) lawmakers and mayors of stoking the unrest. LFI denies the accusation.
“All the young people are in the streets. Everywhere there aren’t police, everything is going smoothly,” said Jean-Luc Melenchon, LFI’s presidential candidate.
Prime minister promises a response
Lecornu has ordered his ministers to tackle the students’ leading demands. Those include ensuring absent teachers are replaced, reviewing the length of the 8:00 am to 6:00 pm school day and the need for longer lunch breaks.
Depuis plusieurs jours, l’ultra-violence a frappé à la porte de nos lycées. Des élèves, des personnels éducatifs, des policiers et des gendarmes ont été blessés. Ces violences doivent être condamnées sans condition.
Beaucoup de fausses informations ont circulé sur l’action des forces de l’ordre. Quelques clarifications sont nécessaires.
Des instructions de proportionnalité ont été données aux policiers et aux gendarmes.
Ce qui déclenche leur intervention, ce sont des violences, résiduellement contre des biens mais surtout contre des personnes. Ou, lorsqu’un lycée est bloqué, la demande du chef d’établissement de recourir à la force publique.
Dans l’immense majorité des cas, des individus violents se mêlent aux lycéens non violents et s’en prennent à eux ou aux personnels de l’Éducation nationale.
Dans des opérations de maintien de l’ordre aussi sensibles, des accidents peuvent arriver. Lorsqu’ils arrivent, l’État de droit s’applique : enquêtes administratives ou judiciaires, transparence, recherche des responsabilités. Et il doit y avoir de l’empathie.
Mais parler de « violences policières » pour suggérer qu’il existerait des instructions politiques de répression est faux.
Il faut faire taire deux mensonges qui divisent notre société : laisser penser qu’il existe une intentionnalité et une disproportion volontaire dans l’usage de la force ; sous-entendre que les policiers et les gendarmes de la République seraient racistes.
La situation est suffisamment grave pour ne pas avoir besoin d’une classe politique qui souffle sur les braises et attise les violences.
— Sébastien Lecornu (@SebLecornu) October 6, 2026
The government will also look at repairs needed to ageing school buildings, said Lecornu, who demanded ministers send in their first proposals by the end of October.
Parent Emilie Lhomme said at a protest outside the Helene Boucher school in Paris that the government’s words were not enough: “That’s all fine and dandy, but that’s not what’s going to change the daily lives of our children,” she said.
Finding spare cash to implement educational reforms will be difficult.
The government is under pressure to try to narrow a ballooning budget deficit as investor concerns about France’s growing debt, weak growth and reluctance to rein in spending push the cost of borrowing higher. The yield on France’s 10-year bonds briefly hit a 24-year high of over five per cent last week.
The surge in French borrowing costs has started to spill into the broader euro area, with the sliding euro currency the latest alarm bell for policymakers. French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Tuesday there was no need for the European Central Bank to step in.
Le Pen set out plans to slash public spending if elected, seeking to establish her fiscal credibility as the bond market crisis deepens.
French spending on education has lagged inflation and the country’s students are trailing their OECD peers in overall performance, data from the PISA 2025 assessment shows.
