Unprecedented student protests are rocking France. Here’s why they’re angry

By Melissa Bell, CNN

(CNN) — France is struggling to contain its biggest student protests in decades. What started as a demonstration in support of striking teachers at a suburban high school to the north of Paris has snowballed into a national crisis.

Hundreds of schools have been forced to close and more than 5,000 people have been taken into police custody, most of them minors with no previous criminal records. Students, teachers and policemen have been injured. One student in the north-east city of Lens lost his hand after reportedly picking up a grenade and another in Tours, the use of an eye.

The next big test for the government will come Tuesday when thousands of people are expected to join protest marches across the country.

Here’s what to know

What’s going on?

The original protest at Saint-Exupéry high school in a Parisian suburb on September 21 attracted little attention. Pupils had joined their teachers to protest a lack of staff and resources. When their demands were met and extra staff sent to the school, the strike ended, but by then the match had been lit. According to student leader Manès Nadel, it spread like wildfire.

“It’s an unprecedented number of schools that are now involved,” he said, adding that France’s Education Ministry had been “totally overwhelmed by the crisis.”

Pupils at lycées in Paris and the surrounding region began blocking entrances, and within days similar scenes were reported across the country, from Lille in the north to Marseille in the south. Images of students setting alight trash cans, manning barricades, assaulting teaching staff and clashing with police led to questions about the police’s response and the far left’s involvement. More than 100 high schools have been damaged since the start of the protest movement.

Critics have accused the police of a heavy-handed response. One policeman was captured on camera using a headlock on a girl in Alençon, a technique now prohibited by law.

The violence and the speed with which the protests have grown have taken many by surprise, but the grievances are long-standing — an overcrowded, ill-equipped and understaffed education system that many students feel is no longer fit for purpose. Videos have circulated for years showing classrooms with too few desks or chairs, or students finding their classes cancelled when an absent teacher is not replaced.

A fertility spike in France in 2010 has led to a rise in the number of high school students now attending schools that have seen years of real-terms funding cuts. Secondary schools now have fewer teachers than in 2008, despite an extra 250,000 students enrolled. In the public sector, 70% of classrooms have more than 30 pupils per class.

What is the government’s response?

Critics say the government’s response has been slow and tin-eared. Initially much of it was focused on the far-left LFI party and its presence at the barricades. The party, led by Jean-Luc Melanchon, who’s expected to do well in the country’s presidential election next spring, has repeatedly defended both the students’ right to protest and his party’s right to be there. There’s also been a lot of focus on the need for a firm police response and the cost of the protest. Damage to schools in the greater Paris region alone is estimated at 7 million euros ($7.84 million).

There was an initial concession over the fees at technological high schools that had been planned for 2027 but this has now been removed from the government’s budget. “The government’s response has been irresponsible and it confirms exactly why the students are angry, because they are never heard,” said Manes. “They are responding only with repression.”

The protesters do now have the government’s full attention, especially after a spike in violence late last week, when the interior minister noted a shift from student protest to urban violence and some 2,000 people were taken into custody in a single day. On Friday, Edouard Geffray, the education minister, met with student leaders. No agreement was reached, however, and the student leaders called for a massive turnout on Tuesday immediately afterward.

The government’s response is being hampered by the poor state of the public finances. It is trying to pass a 2027 budget that narrows the deficit to around 5 percent of GDP, a feat that can only be achieved by painful belt-tightening. Last week France’s 10-year bond yield briefly topped 5 percent last week, its highest since 2002, as the protests compounded concerns about the country’s fiscal outlook.

The unrest has fired the starting gun on what promises to be a vicious race between the far right and far left for the presidency, with much of the center floundering in the polls. For the far left, the pupils are a natural constituency. For the government, they’re a source of disorder and of spending pressure at the worst possible moment.

Historically, student protests have not gone well for French governments. The student protest of May 1968 turned into the largest strike in French history, in a country that knows a thing or two about strikes. One of its slogans was “be realistic, ask for the impossible.”

The difference now is that the students who’ve taken to the barricades once again don’t feel they are asking for much. In fact, they say they are demanding the bare minimum: an education system that allows them to learn.

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