Between 400 and 500 French secondary schools have been fully or partly closed on October 5, with lessons suspended on the orders of the prefects after almost three weeks of pupil blockades. Education Minister Édouard Geffray has said the security conditions needed to keep them open had not been met.
The figure matches October 2, when at least 400 of France’s roughly 3,700 lycées shut their gates and 560 more reported protests or disruption. Agence France-Presse put the number of establishments touched by the movement at about 735.
More than a third of the 468 secondary schools in the Île-de-France region around Paris were due to stay closed, regional president Valérie Pécresse told Franceinfo. Many of the affected schools have switched to distance learning, particularly in Marseille and the Paris suburbs.
Geffray said he wanted a partial and gradual return to lessons rather than a general reopening. Prefects have banned gatherings outside the closed buildings, with the Paris police prefecture naming 13 schools covered by the order.
The minister said on October 4 that 24 schools had been burned or ransacked since the movement began and that 78 education staff had been injured, most of them by people from outside the schools. More than 100 schools have suffered severe damage, and Pécresse put the bill in her region alone at more than €1 million.
Police made more than 5,000 arrests between September 28 and October 2, about 85 per cent of them minors, and close to 2,000 people were placed in custody. Some 170 pupils have been injured, along with several hundred officers.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s office said after a crisis meeting on October 1 that intelligence services regarded the blockades as an operation organised by the left-wing La France Insoumise and its allies. Interior Minister Laurent Núñez said officers were protecting pupils who wanted to put their case peacefully and acting proportionately against rioters.
The movement began at the Lycée Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry in Créteil, southeast of Paris, after a teachers’ strike on September 17. Pupils have complained of unreplaced teachers, classes of 35, long timetables and crumbling buildings.
Teaching unions including the CGT, the CFDT and the FSU have called a national education strike for October 6, when the pupils’ union will hold a further day of action. The closures come as Lecornu seeks €54 billion in savings in the 2027 budget.
