School closures in France as student protests affect lycées

[Mixymaxymoxy]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/02/student-protests-shut-schools-across-france

I’m in France, have a 15 yr old in Lycée. It’s been mostly calm there. Student protestors did start a fire in front of the building and lessons were cancelled that morning, but that’s all. However at the lycée where I work… blockages and protests on Tuesday and Wednesday last week resulted in the forced closure of the school. On Thursday we were told that the CRS (riot police) would be present early to prevent the blockage. Sensibly our proviseur (head of school) preemptively closed the lycée / distance learning for two days to prevent clashes between school students - who are 15 to 17 years old - and the police. This has been extended to Tuesday next week as protests are expected to worsen as the university students join them in solidarity.

What a mess.

I'll say this for the French, they dont take shit lying down.

Not sure the logic works. They are angry about education so burn the schools down which means even more money needed. The French just like to riot.

It's a disgrace. Rioting won't help anyone. It only makes the people rioting look like thugs with no self-control and too little intelligence to tackle a problem effectively. The truth is that most of the ones rioting don't give a shit about the cause they're purportedly rioting over. It's just an excuse to break things, set fires, loot, and potentially hurt other people.

There's a big difference between protesting and rioting. The protests are absolutely justified (education is in dire straits here) and a very normal way to cause disruption and bring attention to a cause. Rioting obviously isn't acceptable. Nonetheless I'm very glad our proviseur took the decision to keep our students away from the CRS at the school.

He has also offered to meet with the student leaders, plus teacher reps, parent reps, union reps on Monday. It's going to be a hard process - we have cases of different groups of students fighting each other, and parents already making formal complaints to the police.

The protestors are not a monolithic group with a single aim or cause, which makes it very difficult. France is such an elitist country, despite the claims to égalité, a lot of protestors / rioters are justified in their anger - though not of course in how they express it.

I think everyone here is absolutely horrified.

as you are in France, you are in a much better position to know, but my impression is things will get a lot worse before they get better and I don’t know how they’re going to get better.

The French are very militant. In my last job I handled media relations for a company with manufacturing operations in France.

There was reliably a walkout by factory staff every year during the pay negotiations round. There would be noisy demos and fires would be started.

Even exec pay was covered by collective agreements! I don’t know any other country that does that. But it didn’t seem to do managers much good - packages were lower and only top execs had company cars, vs all of middle management in the U.K. Not sure about shop floor pay comparison as I didn’t manage shop floor.

The protests are absolutely justified (education is in dire straits here)

Can you give some examples? I'd love to compare them to the state of education here.

Sitting the BAC exams, on which their entire futures rest, in 35-40 degree heat rooms . No fans, no air con. In our school they can’t even get their act together to repair the curtains so that students aren’t sitting in direct sunlight as well.

Classrooms without enough chairs tables etc, students sitting on the floor.

if a teacher is absent long term, no replacement for at least three weeks as the local authority won’t make the effort until then - and even then there are no guarantees. It’s not unusual for exam class students to not have key subject teachers for whole terms at a time, students just do the best they can with their text books. Richer parents plug the gap with tutors, poorer families cannot. 🤷‍♀️

SEN requirements routinely ignored and forgotten. There’s no obligation on teachers to be trained on SEN. Plenty of them dismiss autism / ADHD as bad behaviour or poor parenting.

For our high school students they start at 8am and finish 17h30 or later 5 days a week. They are in classes of 30+ and studying 10-12 separate subjects. It’s survival of the fittest.

Universities are poorly funded and very much second class to the elite and highly selective grandes écoles. The uni the my son went to got a year had only recently has its toilets renovated so they didn’t have to crap in a hole in the ground (Turkish toilets).

there is no oversight of teaching standards. Teachers answer to the ministry, and even then if inspected it’s only on whether they are delivering the curriculum - no focus on teaching, grades, students. The proviseur of the school is an administrative position - he has little authority over teachers.

@Mixymaxymoxy education in France sounds a mess. Am I right in saying private schools aren’t a thing there? (Though you mentioned tutors for those who can afford them).
Nonetheless it sounds as though the protests have long since given way to violence and rioting.

Private schools are a thing but they are nothing like the UK. They are usually religious in origin, under contract to the state and not expensive.

Legitimate protests and rioting are happening in the same space, with many students trying to protest correctly/ peacefully.

Teachers unions are coming out on strike tomorrow to support the students. I’m on a long thread about it with my teaching colleagues - they are hugely supportive of the audiences who are protesting against the crappy conditions in school, and have already met with some of their representatives. These are young kids 15-17 and they are trying so hard to deal with it in a grown up way.

@Mixymaxymoxy thank you for answering my question.

Thanks, some of that sounds fairly similar to the UK, some worse. I think we are probably much better at SEND. Don't go wishing for more oversight of teaching standards though, we have our own battle here with too much oversight causing horrendous stress.

Solidarity with fellow teachers and hope you get a good outcome.

Wow that's so interesting thank you op it sounds terrible !
Re Sen however that sounds like the same here also although we are very very slowly getting more aware.

I would say France is at least 10 years behind the UK for SEN provision/support/acknowledgement. When my kids got diagnosed, the diagnosing psychiatrist warned me not to tell the school cos my kids would be sidelined and rejected.

Fortunately we moved and have ended up in a really supportive school.

The hoops that we had to jump through to get special arrangements for DS1s national exams (he was legally entitled to them) were unbelievable. I said many times that if I had less education/time/money and sheer stubbornness, I would have given up. Even so, the process reduced me to tears several times.

You're right that it's a mess!

I'm also in France and my 15-year-old DS is at lycée.
France is like a tinderbox at the moment with so many problems (some the same as the UK such as immigration and cost of living). There are presidential elections in April in which Marine Le Pen is currently the clear frontrunner and forecast to face Jean-Luc Melenchon (far left candidate) in the second round. So things will probably get worse before they get better.

I do have a lot of sympathy for the students as their concerns about the education system are genuine. But they're being drowned out by the violence of a small minority.

My 15 year old has been getting up at 6am every morning to blockade and protest peacefully. A minority (often not even sixth formers) come along to be destructive and set bins on fire which genuine protesters put out.
Another complaint the lycéens have is the use of excessive force by the police … but that’s France for you, sadly.

Can you list out what your teen was protesting about?

Please could you list out the concerns?

Sorry, I have seen your post. Are you in a city, outskirts or more remote, just out of interest?

Sitting the BAC exams, on which their entire futures rest, in 35-40 degree heat rooms . No fans, no air con. In our school they can’t even get their act together to repair the curtains so that students aren’t sitting in direct sunlight as well.

Classrooms without enough chairs tables etc, students sitting on the floor.

if a teacher is absent long term, no replacement for at least three weeks as the local authority won’t make the effort until then - and even then there are no guarantees. It’s not unusual for exam class students to not have key subject teachers for whole terms at a time, students just do the best they can with their text books. Richer parents plug the gap with tutors, poorer families cannot. 🤷‍♀️

SEN requirements routinely ignored and forgotten. There’s no obligation on teachers to be trained on SEN. Plenty of them dismiss autism / ADHD as bad behaviour or poor parenting.

For our high school students they start at 8am and finish 17h30 or later 5 days a week. They are in classes of 30+ and studying 10-12 separate subjects. It’s survival of the fittest.

Universities are poorly funded and very much second class to the elite and highly selective grandes écoles. The uni the my son went to got a year had only recently has its toilets renovated so they didn’t have to crap in a hole in the ground (Turkish toilets).

there is no oversight of teaching standards. Teachers answer to the ministry, and even then if inspected it’s only on whether they are delivering the curriculum - no focus on teaching, grades, students. The proviseur of the school is an administrative position - he has little authority over teachers.

Yes, I saw that after posting!

Please can I ask, are you remote, in a city, in the outskirts of a city?

What do you teach?

The first day in the lycee near us was peaceful but it was a blockade which was stressful for those who were not involved and trying to get in to lessons. Second day much more violent with teens primarily from a different lycee in the same town and non students heading towards our local lycee. Then another organised demonstration yesterday for a few hours, small numbers involved. Violence near us included bins set alight, teens walking around with knives and making threats, a lot of terrorising messages via social media, oil being thrown across roads and set alight, primary school gates being blown up, fireworks. I think that the violence and the blockading probably drowned out the message for most people.

I also think, to be honest, that demonstrations are not an effective way of changing public opinion to affect policy making. They create fear rather than understanding and there is danger of radicalising mid teens, I think, personally. I think that 15 - 17 year olds are too young, from a child development point of view they belong in classrooms, including being taught more effective and legal ways to change public opinion.

Boiling hot rooms, lack of equipment, etc ironically applied to the top academic school I went to as a child. I absolutely agree that more could be done about this, obviously. In my experience, it is not so much to do with who can afford tutors more to do with privilege in relation to being taught study skills - this is not necessarily related to wealth. And grande ecoles are the equivalent of the top universities in any country, same issues everywhere.

One huge positive in relation to France is that education is virtually free - and you can access extra curricular activities for a fraction of the cost in the UK.

If you listen to educators and parent commentators, and speak to many parents, there are two huge issues which were not addressed at all in these protests from what I could see:

• significant reduction in teaching content in last couple of decades. This is to do with curriculum content and standards rather than the issues listed and many parents see it as a huge issue
• there are very serious problems with behaviour and outside school social issues from college on - arguably leading to some of the more antisocial behaviour we have seen in the last few days - from some quarters (not all) - this seems to be to do with changes in culture underlying policy decision. Looking at the effect of behaviour day by day on teachers it is not surprising that it is difficult to recruit.

So a lot of complicated things going on, and the same applies to the UK but we are culturally different and so we deal with the issues differently.

*higher education is virtually free, in contrast to UK, I meant