The immediate question is whether the holiday has broken the momentum of a movement that briefly spread well beyond the classroom, or merely paused it.
High school protests in France resumed on a far smaller scale on Monday as pupils returned from a two-week holiday, according to Al Jazeera. The Ministry of Education said 41 high schools were blockaded, about one percent of the country's 3,700, the French public broadcaster Franceinfo reported. Students attempted blockades in Paris, Marseille and Rennes, Reuters reported, against hundreds of schools blockaded in the weeks before the break.
Education Minister Edouard Geffray played down the scale of the action. "In terms of blockades, or attempted blockades, the phenomenon is very marginal," he told France Inter radio, according to Al Jazeera. "We're talking about a handful of units, a few individual schools." He said protests were permitted but that preventing access to schools was illegal, and warned that the school year was now at risk for several hundred thousand pupils.
The movement began in the Paris suburbs in September and spread across the country. Last month its focus widened 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. Students are demanding the renovation of ageing schools, more teachers, more university places and an end to an admissions system they see as socially unfair.
The government has moved to meet them. Last week it announced the gradual replacement of the Parcoursup admissions platform by 2028, cancelled planned education job cuts, promised 500 additional posts and a cap of 28 pupils per class in the first year of high school, Franceinfo reported. It also pledged 4 billion euros, about $4.47bn, to renovate schools and 15,000 new places in higher education.
Student representatives said the offers were not enough and vowed to continue. "Of course we're calling for a blockade," Pierre Sourzat, president of the student organisation Les Lyceens!, said on Sunday, according to France 24. The Union Syndicale Lyceenne and Student Union have called for further blockades on Tuesday and Thursday, while the UNEF student union said Tuesday should be a "black day" for universities, with blockades across the country.
The immediate question is whether the holiday has broken the momentum of a movement that briefly spread well beyond the classroom, or merely paused it. The numbers reported on Monday point to a sharp contraction, and the minister's language suggests the government sees the situation as contained. But the concessions announced last week have not bought off the organisers, and the calls for action later this week will test how much support remains. What is not yet known is how many schools will actually be affected on Tuesday and Thursday, whether the wider cost-of-living coalition will rejoin the students, and whether the violence that marked some earlier demonstrations returns. Al Jazeera's report gives no indication of turnout beyond the ministry's figure, and no response from the government to the planned action.
