French school protests resume as students return

High school students in France have resumed protests on a much smaller scale than in previous weeks as pupils returned from their two-week holiday break.

The Ministry of Education said 41 high schools were blockaded on Monday, about one percent of the country’s 3,700, according to the French public broadcaster France info.

Students attempted to blockade schools in Paris, Marseille and Rennes, the Reuters news agency reported.

Hundreds of schools were blockaded in the weeks before the break.
“In terms of blockades, or attempted blockades, the phenomenon is very marginal.

We’re talking about a handful of units, a few individual schools,” Education Minister Edouard Geffray told France Inter radio. He said protests were allowed, but preventing access to schools was illegal.

“The school year is now at risk for several hundred thousand pupils and we can’t allow that,” Geffray said, according to the state public news service Franceinfo.

The protests began in the Paris suburbs in September and spread across France. Last month, the focus of the anger broadened beyond education to the cost of living, drawing in trade unionists and activists.

In a test for President Emmanuel Macron’s minority government, some protests turned into violent clashes with police and riots in several cities, with shops looted.