Before dawn on Tuesday outside the Lycée Sophie-Germain in central Paris, hundreds of teenagers dragged wheelie bins, metal barriers and shopping trolleys to build a barricade outside the front door of their secondary school.
Climbing to the top of the piles of bins, pupils held banners calling for more funding and greater equality in French schools. But they were also protesting against French riot police, who have been accused by human rights groups of using disproportionate force against children in what is fast becoming the biggest youth protest movement in decades.
“Everyone hates the police,” chanted a group of ۱۵- and ۱۶-year-olds. At least ۲۱۵ teenagers, ۷۱۵ police officers and ۸۵ teaching staff have been injured in clashes in recent days, according to the government.
“We’re teenagers with wheelie bins, and the police have heavy weapons, it’s totally mismatched,” said Livia, ۱۷, who was studying theatre at a lycée in northern Paris and did not want her real name published. “The police are extremely violent in France. This is state violence and it’s horrible seeing police allowed to target children. It’s important to remember this is institutionalised violence, it’s planned and deliberate.”
Ten investigations into possible police brutality are under way after injuries allegedly involving the use of police weapons, including one ۱۵-year-old who lost his hand, another who lost his eye and a boy whose jaw and teeth were shattered, leaving him, as his mother said, barely able to eat with a straw in hospital.
“The policing is catastrophic, people have been mutilated by weapons – one boy has lost an eye – it’s horrible,” said Lily, ۱۷ (not her real name), who was studying social sciences in her final year of school and demonstrating for more funding in what she called a discriminatory education system that left poorer children behind. “My parents support me being on the barricades and at the protests. They’re worried about the policing, but they said they’d come and get me from the police station if I was arrested.”
Teenagers nearby held up cardboard signs protesting against the use of teargas and riot police. “A state that gases high school students is a weak state,” read one banner. “Gas rapists, not children,” said another sign in reference to calls for tougher laws against sexual violence. Another banner read: “Not here to riot.”
The unprecedented protest movement that began outside one school in a low-income Paris suburb has spread across the country, taking the government by surprise.
Hundreds of high schools have been barricaded and forced to close as pupils protest against teacher shortages, crumbling buildings and overcrowded classes. The justice ministry said ۵,۰۶۰ people had been arrested since the protests began, ۸۷% of them being minors. More than ۱,۸۰۰ people had been prosecuted, including ۱,۴۸۳ minors, the ministry said, without specifying the crimes. It said ۷۹۰ cases had been dismissed. The government said ۲۴ schools had been burned or ransacked.
“In more than ۲۰ years of teaching, I’ve never seen protests this big,” said one teacher at Sophie-Germain high school who planned to join the Paris demonstration on Tuesday afternoon. “The students in central Paris have shown a great sense of solidarity with those in the Paris suburbs who face much worse conditions in their schools. There’s a feeling of solidarity and generosity between teenagers that flies in the face of the notion that we live in an era of selfishness. No one knows how long this will go on for.”
Tens of thousands of students, trade unionists and parents are expected to march in support of the protests across France on Tuesday afternoon, including in Paris, Toulouse, Nice and Bordeaux, with riot police on alert.
Isabella, ۱۶, said she had the backing of her parents, who work in film and music. “Young people have been teargassed for doing nothing but trying to express their opinion. Everybody told us that school was the great leveller, but today that is not the case at all. A teenager in the banlieue [suburbs] of Paris is never going to have the same opportunities as a student from the city centre. That’s why we’re here today.”
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Lionel, ۱۷, who was in his final year at school and hoped to study English, said: “The aim isn’t to riot or smash things up, we just want to protest peacefully.”
Teenagers also chanted songs against Marine Le Pen, the far-right, anti-immigration candidate in the ۲۰۲۷ presidential election, who is high in the polls as Emmanuel Macron steps down after a decade in office. Many teenagers were worried about the election. “We’re also protesting against the growth of the far right,” said Aislinn.
Justine, ۱۷, who had been at the barricade since before dawn, said she hoped the protest would continue and grow into a “massive” movement. “For years, there has been a mental health crisis among young people in France and anger at rundown schools and the stresses of the education system. We need the government to listen to us and make radical change.”
Maya, an ۱۸-year-old sports science student, had spent two days on a barricade at her university building in Bobigny in solidarity with school students, and joined the Paris protest march on Tuesday. She had attended high school in Drancy in Seine-Saint-Denis outside Paris, in a school she said had mould on the walls, not enough chairs for class and absent teachers who often were not replaced.
“It’s only when we spoke to other students at university who came from different types of schools in the countryside or city centres that we realised our experience was so different and that there was a real injustice to the conditions we had to learn in,” she said.
Julie, ۴۶, a self-employed parent of two high school children from Levallois, in the west of Paris, had joined her husband to accompany her sons to the Paris march. She said: “We’re here to support our children but also to protect them from what is going on with the police and the violence we’ve seen with the police these last few days. We’ve seen our own child teargassed many times in front of his school … It’s unbelievable.”
Students’ names have been changed.
