A staffing dispute spreads nationwide
The movement began in Créteil, southeast of Paris, on September 17, 2026, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. Teachers at Antoine de Saint-Exupéry High School went on strike to protest staff shortages. Students and parents joined them in blocking the entrance; footage circulated on social media before protests spread to other high schools.
Columnist Nabila Ramdani describes students' frustration with the education system as the starting point, rather than the anarchists or criminals associated with the later unrest. The protests emerged just weeks after the return from summer vacation. When police tried to clear blockades at lycées, which teach students ages 15 to 18, protesters resisted. Burning trash bins, graffiti and police tear gas marked the escalation.
By late October, more than 1,000 of France's roughly 3,700 high schools had been affected and hundreds of thousands of people had participated, the Council on Foreign Relations reports.
Crowded classrooms and missed lessons
The complaints concern both staffing and the physical conditions in which students learn. Ramdani describes leaking ceilings, rodents and broken classroom furniture. Some schools lack enough desks and chairs, requiring them to be moved between rooms. Classrooms can be uncomfortably cold in winter and excessively hot in summer.
Education ministry figures reported by RFI put the average secondary-school class size at a record 30.2 students in 2025, excluding vocational programs. The Council on Foreign Relations says nearly one-fifth of classes have 35 to 39 students.
Unfilled teacher absences also mean lost instruction. According to ministry figures cited by RFI, public secondary schools failed to provide 15.4 million teaching hours in the 2024-2025 school year because replacements were unavailable, representing about 7.5 percent of scheduled hours. A separate Snes-FSU union survey covering more than 1,000 schools found that half of secondary schools lacked at least one teacher when the September 2026 school year began.
Ramdani describes low morale and absences lasting weeks or months, often attributed to psychological or other health problems. In Seine-Saint-Denis, a poor department north of Paris, she says the cumulative effect of unreplaced teachers costs students roughly a year of instruction over their school careers.
Unequal chances beyond school
For Ramdani, the dispute also concerns how strongly a student's background shapes future opportunities. She cites research finding persistent discrimination against children from deprived neighborhoods, particularly housing estates. A recent OECD report, she notes, found that students educated in disadvantaged areas have less chance of moving beyond their socioeconomic circumstances than their counterparts in other developed countries.
OECD education analyst Eric Charbonnier said that "disadvantaged students are in disadvantaged schools" and that "this has raised issues of the quality of learning being delivered and higher absenteeism of teachers."
The divide is also visible in access to further study. RFI cites a 2023 government study showing that about one-quarter of students from low-income families enter higher education, versus nearly two-thirds of those from privileged households.
Ramdani argues that former Prime Minister Manuel Valls' description of a "geographical, social, ethnic apartheid," made more than a decade ago, still applies. She sees young people's protests as a legitimate challenge to inequality in a republic founded on liberty, equality and fraternity, while stressing that protest need not involve violence.
Arrests, injuries and escalating violence
As the unrest spread, authorities imposed curfews in some cities and sent additional gendarmes, Ramdani writes. Figures cited by the Council on Foreign Relations record more than 6,000 arrests and 5,000 detentions between September 28 and October 5; nearly 90 percent of those detained were minors. RFI subsequently reported a justice ministry total of about 7,950 people taken into police custody by October 16, most of them minors.
On October 14, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu reported injuries to 937 police officers, 149 education personnel and 248 students. Among the injured students were a 15-year-old maimed by a police-fired sting-ball grenade and a 14-year-old whose jaw was fractured in a similar incident.
An estimated 550,000 to 800,000 people demonstrated nationwide on October 17, including 110,000 in Paris, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. It reports that rioters entered Marseille's city hall by force and burned the town hall in Limoges. About 3,000 shops were looted, while 2,700 people were arrested and more than 200 jailed.
Staffing measures and admissions proposals
The government's response has included 3,000 additional substitute teachers for the 114 worst-affected lycées. The education ministry said 2,000 had been assigned by October 14, according to RFI.
The government also withdrew a proposal to charge tuition for certain technical programs and preparatory classes, the Council on Foreign Relations reports. On October 26, it proposed changes to the Parcoursup university admissions platform by 2027, followed by its full replacement by 2028.
