PARIS: Up to 500 schools across France will close on Monday amid nationwide protests by high school students, as security concerns continue to disrupt classes, Education Minister Edouard Geffray said on Sunday.
Lessons will be “totally or partly suspended” in some “400-500” high schools as the security conditions “have not been fulfilled”, Geffray said, adding that 24 schools had been “burned or ransacked” since the start of the movement.
The teens at French high schools, known as lycees, say that their studies are being ruined by high teacher absences, overlong school days and dilapidated facilities, as well as other grievances.
Over 400 schools in France won’t open tomorrow as student protests spread
High schoolers are protesting overloaded schedules, teacher shortages, and other problems in the education system — mostly through unrest and clashes with police https://t.co/QT4GvJ0eJj
— RT Intl (@RT_on_X) October 4, 2026
Geffray said the number of schools affected on Monday would be comparable to the figure from Friday but vowed there would be a “partial, progressive return to lessons”.
‘Deliberately targeted’
The movement began at a Paris school on September 17 but grew last week into nationwide protests marked in places by outbursts of violence involving teenagers and security forces, which sometimes used tear gas and batons to disperse the children.
“There are activists — particularly from the far-left — who have infiltrated the high school student movement, hijacked it from the students themselves, and engaged in extreme violence,” Gefrray claimed.
“Clearly, this poses a risk to both our staff and our students,” he alleged, adding that 78 education staff members had been wounded — “something we have never seen before”.
“They were deliberately targeted because they were employees of the national education system,” Geffray claimed.
Organisers have called for the protests to continue on Tuesday, citing a lack of “concrete measures” from the government.
Over 5,000 people, 85 percent of them minors, have been arrested since the start of the movement.
Critics have accused police of heavy-handed tactics.
A 16-year-old was detained on Sunday over the assault of a teacher in the southern town of La Ciotat. The teacher, 59, was doused with gasoline and struck on the sidelines of a high school student protest on Friday.
A video circulating on social media shows an individual dressed entirely in black with a masked face splashing liquid onto the teacher, who then clutches his face while a tree burns nearby.
